FAQs

What is the difference between a Chief Technology Officer (“CTO”) and a Chief Information Officer (“CIO”)?

The simple distinction is that the CIO typically looks inward, aiming to improve processes within the company, while the CTO looks outward, using technology to improve or innovate products that serve the customers. A full time CIO makes an average salary of $357,300 per year while afull time CTO makes an average salary of $257,971 per year.

What does “SMB” stand for?

SMB is a shorthand acronym to describe the grouping together of small businesses and medium sized businesses into a single catchall category.

Am I a Small Business or a Medium Sized Business?

Gartner defines SMB’s by the number of employees and annual revenue they have. Small businesses are organizations with fewer than 100 employees and annual revenue less than $50 million while medium businesses are organizations with 100 – 999 employees and annual revenue between $50 million and $1 billion.

What is the difference between Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery?

Business continuity focuses on keeping business operational during a disaster, while disaster recovery focuses on restoring data access and IT infrastructure after a disaster.

What is cloud computing?

Cloud computing enables organizations to quickly and affordably access computing resources, advanced software, new updates and functionalities. Instead of waiting weeks and months to set up on-premises resources, organizations can use the cloud to access resources over the Internet from any location in the world. Cloud innovation offers many benefits, including more efficient data sharing and storage, faster time-to-market, and greater organizational scalability and flexibility.

What is a Managed Services Provider (“MSP”)

An IT Managed Service Provider is a company that assists organizations with the IT infrastructure, maintenance and other technical assistance, along with handling end-user systems, remotely. Offering services such as technology auditing, remote desktop support, application managed services, among others, IT MSPs ensure business continuity that is key to improving business performance. Unlike outsourcing, MSPs take a holistic approach in offering technology services that meet excellence.

How Different is Break/Fix Services From Managed IT Services?

These are the two leading models in IT business support. Break/Fix method is the process of offering IT service support through a fee-for-service model. Under this model, the client is serviced on demand and billed only for that specific service received. Whereas Managed IT Services refer to the shared responsibility pertaining to an organization’s entire IT ecosystem. Unlike on-demand assistance in break/fix service, MSPs work off-premises to keep the client’s systems and networks well maintained, monitored, secured and updated on time well before the need arises.

Why Businesses Need Managed IT Services?

Wide range of services is the prime reason that is driving the IT businesses towards Managed IT Services. Owing to the rising demands and pace of releases, organizations are taking a closer approach to maintenance and monitoring. This is when the IT operations demand increased efficiency, improved dependability, enhanced security and compliance, advanced access to emerging technologies, predictable pricing and more. MSPs take care of these aspects as a shared responsibility taking up some part of the organization’s maintenance and operational burden. These advantages make Managed IT Services the businesses’ choice.

How Managed IT services Benefit Your IT Business?

IT MSPs assist companies with a wide range of services including network monitoring, backup and recovery, data storage, CRM, technical support among others. With these range of services, IT MSPs promise IT businesses improved business continuity, enhanced IT posture, core business focus, enhanced security posture, technology expertise, improved efficiency, standardized processes, operational efficiency, improved responsiveness, among other business benefits.

Who Need Managed IT Services, SMBs or Large Enterprises?

Managed Services applies to all businesses looking for IT support. From startups to multinational companies, the Managed IT Services have become the need of the hour for almost every enterprise. In the wake of growing cloud adoption, the IT MSPs are finding relevance among SMBs who often refrain from spending on complex assets and critical storage maintenance. Moreover, staying updated to the changing technology trends and security updates is often a serious challenge that most companies face. MSPs take care of this. So, MSPs work for every organization, irrespective of their size.

What is The Difference Between Managed Services, Outsourcing and what you offer?

Managed services and outsourcing share commonalities but are different in offering and the approach. Experts in both the areas provide you the needed technology and IT infrastructure support. The consultant service ends with the implementation of a specific requirement. The MSP service is a longer-term engagement that helps your company’s IT to improve over a long-term. An IT consultant lays down the path while an MSP proactively manages and operates the client’s IT needs. IT Consulting has more to do with advice, managed services deal with the implementation required to run a specific application or a service.

We blend it all together into a single comprehensive service offering that includes leadership (fractional CTO/CIO), consultancy (our advisory services), and the staff (help desk support, engineers, programmers) and management of the staff.

Are your services available in my town, city or state?

Our services are available to US based businesses in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Most of our clients prefer to leverage our service offering on a virtual basis complimented by periodic onsite in person meetings. We can also provide for our staff to be under your roof during normal business hours on a short term, intermediate or long term basis if you prefer.

Why should we choose to do business with you?

We are one of the earliest adopters of an in cloud/fully off premises environment for small business. In fact we were doing it before “The Cloud” even had a name yet. Our staff are all citizens of the United States so you never have to worry about dealing with people who don’t speak english fluently and/or have to learn how to navigate the dramatic cultural differences with vendors offshore.

What do your services include?

We offer the complete compliment of services you would expect from a fully staffed Fortune 500 company IT Department all on a fully outsourced basis at a fractional of the cost of direct hire. This ranges includes but is not limited to a Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Officer, Hardware Engineers, Software Engineers, Software Programmers and Help Desk Support staff.

What will it cost me to engage you for services?

The pricing for each client is different based on the size and scope of their needs.

Why is AWS more popular than Azure?

Microsoft Azure and AWS both offer comparable services, but both are trying to take the top spot. AWS is more well-known than Azure. Due to its almost 7-year operating history, AWS has greater resources, infrastructure, and superior, scalable services than Azure. More significantly, while Azure was attempting to catch up, Amazon could expand its cloud infrastructure by adding more servers and utilizing economies of scale more effectively.

What is the difference between Azure and AWS?

Azure is regarded as a Platform as a Service (PaaS) as well as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. Because of its parent business, Azure is a very potent offering. Microsoft offers an infrastructure support level that is comparable to a few other businesses. On the other hand, AWS has a big toolkit that is expanding exponentially, much like Amazon itself. AWS has more than 10 years of experience in the cloud computing sector, making it the market leader and has been for some time. Platform as a Service (PaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Software as a Service are the three categories under which AWS services fall (Saas).

Is Azure the same as AWS?

No, AWS cloud platform was introduced by Amazon in 2006, whereas Azure cloud platform was launched by Microsoft in 2010. Despite having similar use cases and being widely used in the Big Data community, both platforms are owned by different companies.

Is AWS better than Azure?

Pay-as-you-go pricing is available from both Azure and AWS. Azure is billed per minute, whereas Amazon Web Services is billed hourly. Azure provides greater flexibility in short-term subscription arrangements. When the two are compared, Azure is more costly. Azure is the finest alternative for a robust Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) provider and even a Windows integration. If a company needs infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) or a wide range of tools, AWS may be the ideal option. It will be determined by the needs of the users.

Is AWS bigger than Azure?

Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon.com’s cloud computing business, is the world’s largest cloud service provider. The company offers over 200 fully featured services from its data centers, including computing, storage, and database. Azure’s income has increased by 50%, but the figures are not public. AWS now has a 40% market share, whereas Azure has a 30% market share. AWS looks to be the market leader in terms of market share and revenue.

How do I choose between AWS and Azure?

Ask yourself the following five questions to find out: What kind of computing power will I require?, How Much Storage Do I Need for My Company’s Infrastructure?, What Kind of Database do I Require?, What Network Capabilities Does My Business Require?, And What Am I Able to Afford?

What are the advantages of Microsoft Azure?

Microsoft Azure’s notion of speed is altogether different, although they do place a focus on locating data centers across the world to provide consumers the best chance of receiving their data when they need it. One of the primary advantages of adopting Azure is how flexible it is due to its easier scaling. It merely takes a single click to increase service levels, and businesses are free to drop these higher service levels when they no longer want the extra storage, computation, or support. Microsoft Azure has thought of almost everything, including a whole end-to-end array of services.

Do I need an in house “dedicated IT team” and my own physical servers in my office?

Most small businesses can operate without the need for direct hire W2 staff on a full-time basis. For a fraction of the cost, you can have the machines and software solutions your users rely on every day cared for by our team.

What if I don’t want to commit to an annual contract?

We only engage with companies who see the value in proactively monitoring and managing their IT environment.

How Much Does Custom Software Cost?

The projects we work on fall into one of the following three categories follows:

Small Project

$25–80K

Project Examples:

Mobile applications (multi-platform) with no server-side implementation.

Mobile applications (multi-platform) with discrete server-side implementation supporting mobile functionality.
Well-defined, limited feature set web applications.

 

Medium Project

$80–150K

Project Examples:

Enterprise applications integrating web and mobile functionality.
Consumer-facing service applications
Applications with user management, multiple user roles, moderate business logic, or siloed workflows.

 

Large Project

$150K–1M+

Project Examples:

Enterprise applications supporting complex business logic, hardware, third-party applications, complex user workflows, and robust reporting.
Data-driven applications
Consumer-facing application supporting mobile devices, social functionality, AI, complex user interactions, and robust reporting.