We are your Technology Business Partner

Frequently asked questions

As a Managed Services provider, we have heard and responded to many questions regarding our service. Knowing that there are a lot of options when it comes to IT partners, we wanted to highlight and advertise the questions and answers we have experienced. If you have a question, we encourage you to contact us.

Q1: If we were to have some sort of catastrophic event that took down one or more of our servers, how quickly would you expect to be able to get us back up and running in all three offices? 

A1: Great question and this depends mostly on the way the current environment is setup and less on the team providing the service. For example, if you were to hire us, any other MSP or an IT person, they would be reliant on restoring the same service with the resources available. Which means, is the backup solution keeping hourly, nightly or weekly backups? Is there a backup server in place to failover to in the event of the server going down? What method is available to restore the files and systems once a new server is available? However, the biggest difference with BCS is to best answer this question would be to complete an assessment on the backup solution as it is and we can share what it’s capable of as it sits today. From there, we would want to hear from you, the business, on if the solution is acceptable and if not, what are the business requirements. We would then research and provide a recommended solution to meet the business requirements. Our services are included in the price which includes the research, recommendations, installation of selected solution and ongoing management. The other guys are not going to do any of this without additional costs.   Lance is accurate in his response above however. I will also add that a Severity 1 issue we have an SLA of being engaged within 15 minutes.  To be honest with our monitoring tools in place we typically resolve the issues before they happen, worse case they do happen and we are typically the ones notifying our customer of the outage.  This is core to our belief that we should be proactive support and not reactive.

Q2: Where and how would you backup the data from our servers? 

A2: This would remain the same as it is today unless there is a business reason to make the change. A business reason could be related to the response above where the backup solution is not meeting business requirements.   Again Lance is accurate,  To add to the answer though in general we will take over how you are backing up today.  With that being said if that solution does not make sense due to the business requirements we then work with you to understand what is required and select the right solution.  We do typically use Azure Backup or Datto to flexibility and cost due to the large file sizes.

Q3: On a related note, your agreement lists Server Backup and Anti-Virus as “if purchased by client”. Are these excluded from the Platinum Package pricing? If so, what is the cost? And does a company like ours need these?

A3: We have recommended solutions for backups and anti-virus which do have a cost as they are subscriptions. The cost to manage the solutions are included in the Platinum package so if there is existing services in place, we will manage them. We can assess the server backup solution that is in place and provide recommendations. We can do this effort before or after a signed managed services agreement, no charge either way. Most of our clients use the built in Windows Defender client for Anti-Virus as we’ve found that its highly effective as long as you maintain it, which we do. If additional security is needed, we recommend Sophos which carries a monthly workstation/server fee .

Q4: Do you assist us with forward-looking budgeting? What is your method for doing so? 

A4: Absolutely,  Our principal engineers generally fill the role of IT Director.  Our methodology involves a monthly to quarterly business review with the leadership team.  During this discussion we review where the business is going or changes within the business.  This would future expansion plans, new ventures, new initiatives that may affect reliability or capacity, etc. Then we bring recommendations to the business leadership on how we can improve or change IT resources to meet the needs identified.  This is an ongoing conversation during the weeks leading to these discussions as well.  In short, if you had an in house CIO or IT Director what would you expect them to do?  That is what you can expect from our Principal engineers.

Q5: As you know, we anticipate growing from 48 to somewhere around 70 staff, across the 3 offices. How do you support that growth? What services do you provide as part of our contract, or add-ons, to support that growth? As an example, when we expand our office, we will add up to 16 workstations in a space adjacent to our existing office. 

A5: We operate differently than other MSP’s so when you are planning to grow, as in selecting the location and planning out the space, we have a seat at the table so we can represent the IT needs for the space. We plan out all IT needs for the new space (telco, internet, wiring, laptop needs, network, wireless). The business buys the necessary equipment and circuits, we do all the work and our monthly number goes up by the number of employees added. You grow your business and we grow as well. Win win!!

Q6: What more do you need to know about our systems and setup now, so that there are no surprises for you or us as you start to work with us. We don’t want to start working with you and then hear “We didn’t realize you had this?”

A6: Every new customer we onboard has had someone managing it before us. We can certainly complete an assessment ahead of onboarding to identify any catastrophic issues in your environment. Or we can begin onboarding, identify issues and make recommendations. Since we do operate differently and focus on providing you an IT service at a flat-rate, we are accepting IT responsibility for what it is. If you were going to hire an IT staff member, would they take the time to assess before accepting the job? Probably not because as IT professionals we’ve seen it all. The other MSP’s like to minimize their scope as if all customers are cookie cutter, we are not like them. We accept snowflakes here.

Q7: How much do you anticipate charging clients for having to come out to our offices/onsite services?

 A7: All existing locations are 100% covered with no extra cost. The intention is for any travel to anywhere else, such as researching a possible new location in a separate state, we would ask our customer to cover the costs. In the event that our customer does open a new office, we would amend the agreement to include the additional location and all service fees would be inclusive.