Helpdesk, monitoring, and managed IT support. Browse our expert articles below.
A balanced look at outsourcing IT support, the real benefits, the honest downsides, how to compare cost against the full internal alternative, and when keeping it in-house is the better call.
StuartA step-by-step framework for building an IT support plan: recovery objectives, asset mapping, choosing a support model, the preventative routine, security baseline, recovery runbook and a costed roadmap.
StuartRemote IT support means engineers connect securely to your systems over the internet to diagnose and fix problems without visiting. It resolves the majority of day to day issues faster than any van can arrive, and it is how modern helpdesks work by default. The judgement is knowing which problems still need hands on hardware.
Managed IT support means an external provider takes ongoing responsibility for your technology for a fixed monthly arrangement: monitoring, maintenance, helpdesk, security and planning, rather than being called when something breaks. It is the standard model for businesses that depend on their systems but do not want to build an internal IT department.
Data security is mostly ordinary IT support done consistently: knowing what you hold, controlling access, patching, protecting email, and testing the backups that save you when everything else fails.
StuartChoosing an IT support provider comes down to verifiable answers on a short list of questions: guaranteed response times in writing, security included as standard, references from businesses like yours, a documented onboarding process, and a contract you can actually read. This checklist covers each one and the answers that should concern you.
How to make compliance a by-product of everyday IT support: mapping your obligations, building the five core controls in, and generating evidence automatically instead of assembling it under pressure.
StuartA practical guide to using IT support to protect business continuity and uptime, covering backups, monitoring and disaster recovery.
StuartSwitching IT support providers is less disruptive than most businesses expect. Here's the step-by-step handover process, what you own, and where switches go wrong.
AdamMicrosoft protects the platform, not your data. Here's what Microsoft 365 does and doesn't recover, where the gaps are, and what a proper backup should cover.
StuartMost email compromises start with a stolen password. The fix is free, built into Microsoft 365, and takes about ten minutes.
ChrisTechnology only becomes a problem when it's ignored. Seven practical strategies UK small businesses can use to get support, security, cloud and comms right before something breaks.
StuartThe IT setup a new starter gets on day one tells them what kind of business they've joined. Here's the checklist we run for our managed IT customers, and the mistakes we see most often.
ChrisTen pointed questions to ask any prospective managed IT provider before signing, based on the objections and horror stories we hear most often from UK SMEs switching to us.
Chris
A straight-talking breakdown of managed IT support pricing in the UK - what you should pay per user per month, what's included at each tier, and how to avoid overpaying.
ChrisYou hit send on the wrong email. Here is exactly how to recall it in Outlook desktop, the new Outlook, the web app and Microsoft 365, plus what to do when recall fails (which is most of the time).
StuartIT support is one of those things you don't notice when it's working, and feel acutely when it isn't. Here is the real cost of getting it wrong, and what good support quietly prevents.
StuartIT support means keeping the technology your business runs on working, reliably, securely and without drama. Here is what good IT support actually looks like.
StuartA no-nonsense checklist for switching IT support provider, from contract length and exit clauses to security standards, response times and what really happens during onboarding.
StuartA practical FAQ on business data recovery, backup vs recovery, RTO vs RPO, ransomware scenarios, what your insurance actually covers, and the questions to ask any IT provider before something goes wrong.
StuartYou've hit send. The email sat in Outlook's Outbox for a moment. Now it's still there, in italics, and nothing's moving. Or worse, the message bounced back with a string of error codes that mean nothing to you.
StuartIn July 2024 a single bad CrowdStrike update bluescreened over 8 million Windows machines worldwide. This is the playbook for surviving the next global IT outage, what to do, in what order.
StuartThe Blue Screen of Death is Windows telling you something has gone badly wrong at a level it can't recover from. Here is how to diagnose stop codes and fix BSODs on Windows 10 and 11.
StuartA slow PC isn't just annoying. Multiply five wasted minutes per person per day across a 30-person business and you've lost the equivalent of one full-time employee, every year, to spinning loading icons.
StuartWhat to do in the first hour of data loss, what's realistically recoverable, and how to build a backup setup that makes the next incident a non-event.
StuartThe internet is down. The whole office is staring at you. Step-by-step diagnosis from Wi-Fi to ISP outage, for office-wide and single-machine network problems.
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