What happens when your employees can't get to work?

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There was a time when waking up after a massive snowstorm was a joyous occasion. You’d sit down to watch TV or listen to the radio, hoping to hear your school’s name on a list of those closed for the day. There really wasn’t anything better in the winter than a snow day.

Sadly, however, those days are long gone. There are a lot of perks to being an adult, but one of the drawbacks is that having an entire office stay home for a few days when the weather gets rough simply isn’t an option.

That being said, working from home poses a lot of challenges too. Aside from having to deal with kids loudly enjoying their snow day, remotely accessing business applications can be difficult.

Forcing employees to come in during a blizzard is reckless

Many more thoughtless employers believe the answer to this problem to be simply requiring employees to get to work regardless of the weather conditions. While maintaining business continuity is incredibly important to profits, at the end of the day your employees are really the only irreplaceable part of your operation. With the U.S. Department of Transportation having found that more than 31 percent of fatal weather-related car crashes happened due to snow and ice between 2004 and 2013, requiring people to come into work under such conditions could prove to be deadly.

Don't force your workers to come in on a snowy day. Driving in the snow is dangerous.

What’s more, getting to the office in a blizzard can actually be illegal. During winter storm Jonas in January 2016, New York City and Long Island were forced to ban traveling. This included trains and city mass transit, and also driving in the tunnels and onto bridges. So not only is forcing employees to come in during a massive snow storm incredibly heartless, it could be illegal.

Working from home is a start, but there’s a catch

All this being said, your business likely can’t just stop operations for a few days while a storm blows over. Your clients and partners demand continuity, which means employees will have to work from home when the snow falls heavily. Certain business applications are absolutely vital to your company’s work, and yet quite a few of these systems may not be able to be accessed while at home. They require employees to be in the office when utilizing them, severely cutting down on what your employees can do while at home.

While this is clearly a major problem for employees that rely on mission-critical applications to get their work done, there are other logistics to be considered when implementing a work-from-home initiative in the wake of a disaster. According to the Pew Research Center, 67 percent of Americans have a broadband connection at home. While that’s still a majority, it shows a massive hurdle many companies will have to overcome when trying to maintain business continuity after a disaster. A proportion of your employees may not have high-speed Internet at home, which means their ability to stay productive is going to severely drop.

“Employers need to have a plan in place.”

Proper planning is vital

What all this means is that employers need to have a plan in place for the eventuality of workers being snowed in. This includes having a lengthy discussion with employees about their home situations, including their ability to connect to the Internet if the need for them to work from home should arise.

It also means that cloud-based disaster recovery is an absolute must for those businesses operating in colder climates. Blizzards are a very real threat to business continuity, and not being able to access your applications in the event of such a disaster could be costly to your operations.

Consult with an ISG Technology disaster recovery professional today and save yourself the headache of an adult snow day.

IT infrastructure challenges: Big data in healthcare

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One of the most common issues within the medical industry is deciding how to manage all of the data being generated on a near-constant basis. The amount of information created by hospitals and health clinics is astounding and isn’t going to slow down anytime soon.

In general, big data is increasing at an accelerated rate across every industry. The IDC predicted in November 2015 that by 2019, spending on big data infrastructure and services would reach a total value of 48.6 billion, growing at a compound annual rate of 23 percent. This is a clear indication that organizations are learning that they need specific tools to measure and analyze the data they collect.

What is all of this information being used for? Let’s take an in-depth look at how the healthcare industry tackles big data:

“Data provides a good foundation for making value-based decisions.”

Value-based purchasing

Big data is helping the medical industry make better decisions about what tools are going to help patients the most. According to HealthcareITNews, the Affordable Care Act has created an incentive for hospitals to prove their value – but how to do that? Data, it turns out, is providing a good foundation for making these value-based decisions.

The value of pharmaceutical and medical devices can be quantified by determining how these tools are being used to help patients. For instance, an organization can measure quality-adjusted life years.

“At its core, big data is about massive amounts of electronic patient information that can be mined to yield tailored medical results,” Scott Zeger, director of HopkinsinHealth and a biostatistics professor at Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Health Data Management.

In other words, it all comes down to how medical tools are being used to increase the quality of life for patients and improve outcomes, which the analysis of big data can shed light on.

Medical instruments and pharmaceuticals are given value based on how they're used to improve outcomes.Medical instruments and pharmaceuticals are given value based on how they’re used to improve outcomes.

Storage issue: Genomic research

One challenge presented by big data is the question of where all the generated healthcare information is going to reside. The problem of storage is a very real one, especially in an industry that’s governed by compliance regulations and strict legal boundaries. To that end, the big data storage problem is nowhere as acute as it is with human genomic research.

A report published in July 2015 in the scientific journal PLoS Biology found that by 2025, between 100 million and 2 billion human genomes could be sequenced. This sequencing is going to create as many as 40 exabytes of data. To put that in perspective, here’s a fun fact: According to High Scalability, as of 2012, every word spoken by every human throughout history only adds up to about 5 exabytes of data. This creates an issue with data management within the healthcare space.

What’s the answer?

Some say that cloud infrastructure offers a ready answer to the challenges presented by big data in the healthcare industry. No matter how big your big data problems are, at ISG Technology, we can help you find solutions that will meet your needs. Whether you want to store your data in the cloud or in on-premises environments, our managed services experts will know what the answer is. Contact us today for more information.

Why should you invest in cloud-based UC?

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One of the most important aspects of conducting business is the ability to communicate easily, quickly and efficiently across the company and between partners. Promoting effective communication is critical to business operations, and the technology your employees use to conduct these communications – via messaging, email and voice – can make a real difference in the long run.

How do companies ensure in-house and external communication is as effective as it can be? Technology solutions can be utilized to fill the gaps where human interaction lacks. Email, phone and instant messaging are all key tools that companies can use to promote efficient, effective communication between teams and employees in general.

Therefore, investing in a unified communications strategy can be one of the most important decisions a CIO can make for his or her organization. Both on-premises and hosted UC tools offer a slew of advantages. For instance, implementing cloud-based UC solutions is a step in the right direction. In a 2015 survey of 451 IT executives, Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found that 72 percent of respondents view collaboration as a top advantage of cloud computing. This is a clear indication that the benefits of UC are enhanced by the fact that these tools exist in the cloud.

“Both on-premises and hosted UC tools offer a slew of advantages.”

Top benefits

There are several key advantages to utilizing a hosted UC solution. Here are only a few:

  • Mobility: In today’s business landscape, everything is going mobile. Bring-your-own-device policies have become a key aspect of the technology strategy of many organizations. In addition, the fact that these tools are powered by the cloud makes it easier to take them with you wherever you go. Need to answer an email on the run? Or conduct a conference call from the airport? No problems with hosted UC solutions.
  • Productivity: Because cloud-based UC allows for this enhanced mobility, workers can boost their productivity to new levels. Being able to collaborate during the commute and from home has been known to increase the amount of work employees can accomplish. A 2015 study conducted by Stanford researcher Nicholas Bloom found that call center employees who worked exclusively from home made 13.5 percent more phone calls than their office-bound counterparts, according to the Harvard Business Review.
  • Cost-effectiveness: Hosted solutions are cost-effective due to their cloud-based nature. Cloud computing itself has been proven to save organizations in both capital and operational expenses, and hosted UC is no different. Instead of having to invest in phone lines that won’t travel with your business if you have to move to a different office, outsourcing UC means you don’t have to pay extra to switch landlines.
Enhanced collaboration is possible with hosted UC solutions.Enhanced collaboration is possible with hosted UC solutions.

The coming year

As 2016 gets underway, industry analysts are hopeful about the future of UC. According to Information Age contributor Ben Rossi, organizations have the opportunity to gain better return on investment for their UC tools in the coming year. Once the challenges of security and utilization are surmounted, along with maintaining value and determining whether on-premises or hosted solutions are the best for a particular organization’s strategy, companies that adopt these kinds of tools will start to see real ROI.

Collaborate with ISG Technology today to gain the benefits from implementing cloud-based unified communications tools. We offer on-premises UC solutions, along with cloud-based tools made possible with our data center services.

What are the risks of hybrid cloud?

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Hybrid IT infrastructure is quickly becoming one of the biggest trends of the current decade, and this strategy can sometimes include hybrid cloud deployments. According to the RightScale 2015 State of the Cloud Report, 82 percent of surveyed enterprises were running a hybrid cloud strategy, and Data Center Knowledge stated in mid 2015 that adoption of these technologies was expected to triple by 2018. The benefits of embracing hybrid cloud are clear: Companies are able to improve IT flexibility and choose solutions that fit their specific needs, all while maximizing cost efficiency and asset utilization, according to FierceCIO contributor David Weldon.

As adoption goes up and more companies look into deploying hybrid strategies within their IT departments, so too do the number of issues that arise in dealing with the new technologies that hybrid cloud brings to the table. Let’s take a look at the biggest risks when it comes to cloud and hybrid IT, then discuss strategies for dealing with these issues:

“Software and application changes occur on the provider’s side.“

1. Loss of control

The CIO’s job is to manage risk within his or her company, and as such may view that total control over every part of the technology strategy of the organization is necessary. However, when cloud-based tools are utilized, software and application changes occur on the provider’s side, meaning IT executives may not have a say. Therefore, according to CIO contributor Shoeb Javed, one of the most important risks of hybrid cloud computing is the perceived loss of control on the part of the CIO and other members of the executive board.

“Applications change all the time, and when those applications are outside the company’s control, they could be caught unprepared when a sudden software update occurs,” Tripwire contributor Rick Delgado stated. “A single application change can create integration problems with other programs, leading to major disruptions among the most critical business applications.”

2. Cloud security

A lot has been said lately about the cloud and its apparent inherent risks as far as security is concerned. The market for cloud security tools keeps going up by the day, and it’s expected to reach a total value of $8.71 billion by 2019, according to a 2014 report published by MarketsandMarkets. This is a clear indication that security is on the minds of industry CIOs.

There are a few main security challenges for organizations that deploy hybrid cloud strategies, according to TechTarget. These include risk management, security management and poorly constructed service-level agreements. Most of these problems stem from the complications that can arise when private and public cloud are both used in conjunction with one another – managing two kinds of deployments can be a complex task for IT teams.

3. Compliance

This is an issue that goes along with the aforementioned security challenge. Businesses have to ensure that all parts of their cloud strategy are compliant with any industry regulations. It’s crucial to ensure the data traveling between private and public cloud environments is secure, as well.

For instance, organizations within the healthcare sector have to prove that their systems are compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which designates strict security standards for protected health information. If a business works with payment card data, it is subject to the rules set forth by the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. All of these regulations need to be managed properly, and in certain circumstances, hybrid IT could complicate effective management strategies.

Companies that work with payment card data need to make sure their hybrid cloud deployments are secure and compliant.Companies that work with payment card data need to make sure their hybrid cloud deployments are secure and compliant.

Worth the challenge

Considering the risks of hybrid IT is one of the most important responsibilities of the technology department of any organization. However, the many benefits of investing in hybrid infrastructure outweigh these risks when they’re managed effectively. That’s why having a managed services partner around to help your organization deal with these hybrid cloud risks is not only a great idea – it’s essential to a successful hybrid IT strategy.

When you partner with a company like ISG Technology, you can rest assured that the risks of migrating data to and from virtual environments will be orchestrated by cloud experts. Get in touch today to find out more about how our hybrid cloud solutions fit your business needs.

Server virtualization: What can it do for your company?

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When it comes to making sure business is running smoothly, it often falls on the shoulders of the IT department to ensure that everything is aligned and working toward the end goal of more growth, higher revenue and better reputation among clients. To this end, server virtualization can be one of the better ways to ensure optimized resource use and preserve functionality within the IT department.

According to a 2015 study conducted by Techaisle, 54 percent of small to medium-sized businesses in the U.S. currently leverage server virtualization, a hefty increase from the 41 percent of 2013. For midmarket companies, penetration is at 88 percent. Clearly, organizations are jumping on the bandwagon of server virtualization. Let’s take a look at this technology and see how it can impact your company for the better:

“IT admins don’t have to worry as much about processing capacity.”

What is it?

Server virtualization is the act of taking one physical server and splitting it into multiple – and, compute resources permitting, sometimes infinite – virtual environments. Virtual machines run on a guest/host paradigm, according to TechTarget. This means that a single administrator (the host) can create virtual machines (guests) that use different operating systems. Guests sit on top of something called a hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor, which allocates resources and validates all of the guest-validated CPU information.

These guest machines, while not running from a physical location, still use up real resources. However, since it’s all managed via one physical server, resource use is curbed significantly, so IT admins don’t have to worry as much about processing capacity or resource management.

Creating virtualized servers can lead to significant OPEX and CAPEX savings.Creating virtualized servers can lead to significant OPEX and CAPEX savings.

Worth it in the long run

Virtualization doesn’t just save up space in the server room. By getting rid of physical infrastructure and deploying VMs within minimal real servers, companies can save money as well. Significant reductions in capital and operational expenditures are possible by transforming IT infrastructure in this manner. In fact, according to TechTarget contributor Rick Vanover, the more effective use of resources and greater computing capacity can lead to savings due to less space and power used within the data center.

ISG Technology is a certified partner of VMware, one of the tech giants in the world of virtualization. In fact, VMware was listed as the number-one virtualization company by ServerWatch, and Gartner named the company one of the leaders in the field in 2015. At ISG, we can help you choose and manage your VMware solution so you don’t have to worry about your IT resources or CAPEX/OPEX.

Contact ISG Technology today for more information!

Real Risks of Cybercrime

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First of all, there is a saying going around that “it’s not if you’ll get breached, it’s when”. Today, effective protection requires insight into both the nature and motivation of attacks. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t know who is attacking them, why, or what they’re after.

Cybercriminals are no longer solitary figures who carry out their crimes in isolation, but instead part of an ever-expanding network of virtual crime that’s gaining power every day. The evolution of cybercrime has led to the emergence of a crime sphere that’s highly connected, spread out across the globe and alarmingly efficient in terms of their capacity to compromise networks and steal data and money. Businesses can count on the principle of continuous improvement among cybercriminals.

Breaches are not events, they are processes. Today, the worst breaches are not “one time attacks or thefts”. They are system vulnerabilities exploited over long periods of time. This means it is just as important to know when you’ve been breached, and how to shut it down, as it is to prevent the breach in the first place.

The good news? We’ve been seeing some really good solutions coming down the pike, including incident response, compromise assessments and advanced threat management services. The goal of a cybersecurity strategy is to reduce exposure, recover faster and reduce potential damage.

First, you have to know what’s coming. This is about being proactive by identifying vulnerabilities and taking assessment of your capabilities. Second, you need to secure your digital interactions by hardening your defenses – often at the code level. Staff training around common cybercrime tactics is recommended. Third, detect and manage inevitable breaches with robust analytics. Finally, it’s extremely important to ensure business continuity and availability of your IT environments, systems and apps.

Hybrid cloud forecast: Industry report

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The cloud is generating a lot of hubbub in tech circles lately. Verizon’s latest State of the Market report found that 87 percent of enterprises are using virtual environments for mission-critical workloads, and that number increases daily. A recent report published by Synergy Research Group found that the cloud services market – which includes six major verticals – grew by an annual rate of 28 percent. Operators and vendors in this market earned a total of $110 billion in the four quarters leading up to September 2015. In addition, the private and hybrid cloud services markets grew by 45 percent.

“The private and hybrid cloud services markets grew by 45 percent in 2015.”

The importance of hybrid cloud

While IT infrastructure spending still tops money spent on the cloud, the latter is inching upward. The hybrid cloud, especially, is becoming more important in the overall tech strategies of businesses at every level, including small firms and large enterprises. An important benefit of investing in cloud storage services that utilize these hybrid environments is in security.

One of the main draws to the cloud is its inherent flexibility. With hybrid strategies, however, this concept is taken a step further, as businesses can choose what they want and don’t want running in their cloud infrastructure. Hybrid clouds, according to CloudTweaks contributor Daniel Price, allow companies to take advantage of the vast scalable resources of public cloud environments. This can positively impact security in the long run.

Security is an important benefit to consider when investing in hybrid cloud environments.Security is an important benefit to consider when investing in hybrid cloud environments.

Demand for hybrid cloud expertise

The popularity of the hybrid cloud has skyrocketed in the last few years. It’s becoming such an important part of nearly every industry’s tech strategy that the specific skill set that comes with the hybrid cloud territory is now coveted by companies across the board. According to WindowsITPro contributor Cheryl J. Ajluni, there is a high demand for workers with these types of skills.

“As new cloud technologies emerge, enterprises are struggling to find employees who can keep up with the changes and deliver the skills they need,” Ajluni wrote. “Some of the new skill sets those employees will need training in include open source knowledge, particularly around OpenStack, and container expertise. They’ll also need vendor-specific skills tailored around the cloud solutions those vendors offer.”

By partnering with ISG Technology, companies can rest easy knowing their hybrid cloud strategy is in the right hands. The stress of having to find new employees to effectively manage the hybrid cloud can be alleviated when you consult our cloud and managed services experts. Contact ISG Technology today for more information!

Which industries are going to be affected by big data?

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The digital age has ushered in a level of information transfer that has never been seen before. A Cisco report predicted that in 2016 alone, the human race will generate more than a zettabyte of worldwide IP traffic. For those who don’t know much about data storage, a byte, as Tech Target describes it, can contain about a single letter of the alphabet. A zettabyte, on the other hand, is one sextillion or 10²¹ bytes. That’s a lot of letters zipping around the globe every year.

With all of this data creation, it’s not surprising that many within the field of IT are looking to analyze the massive piles of information out there to try to find patterns and trends. This is called big data analytics, and it’s become a hot topic in recent years. Until now, people hadn’t really dealt with data on the massive scale that the world is seeing now. As such, analytics experts hadn’t developed ways to sort through huge data dumps until recently.

As big data analytics becomes more popular, people are beginning to ask the question of which industries are going to be affected by this trend. While this is certainly an understandable inquiry, the real question is which industries aren’t going to be affected by big data. Just about every sector can benefit from analyzing massively produced data, and we’d like to take a look at some of the industries with the most potential.

“Those working outside IT can benefit from analytics.”

Insurance

Although a lot of people like to discuss the effects big data is going to have on the tech industry, those working outside IT can also benefit from analytics if they take the time to do so. Insurance is definitely one of these sectors, as agents within the field have to sort through a lot of information in order to assess risk.

Forbes contributor Bernard Marr brought up the interesting point of how big data analytics can help insurance companies set premiums for potential clients. He discussed how many insurance agencies install tracking devices in cars and use the information gained to analyze the driving behaviors of that specific client against the mass of data collected from other clients. Essentially, big data is helping to turn setting a premium into more of a concrete procedure rather than an educated guess.

Health care

As compliance standards such as HIPAA begin to accept more digital means of transmitting patient information, health care is increasingly seeing the benefits of big data analytics. Taking massive quantities of information and forming them into workable understandings of the current health landscape is going to be a critical part of the industry’s growth in the coming years.

One of the biggest areas with potential for big data analytics has to be the adoption of smartphones – and to a lesser extent wearables – into the general populace. About 68 percent of Americans currently own a smartphone, according to the Pew Research Center, which means a majority of U.S. residents are taking advantage of the ability to have a computer in their pocket.

These handy devices have a plethora of everyday uses, but one of the ways people are using them currently is to track their exercise and dieting habits. The number of apps that follow your activity levels are nearly innumerable, and all of them are gold mines when it comes to big data analytics.

Big data has serious implications within the health care industry. Doctors can seriously benefit from an analysis of health care data.

Imagine if doctors working on a cure for diabetes could see the dietary and exercising habits of the average diabetic. Years ago this would have meant intense research, followed by an even longer amount of time dissecting the results. Now, with modern technology and big data analytics, it is possible for diabetics to simply track their own activities via smartphones and upload that information straight to the doctor’s data storage method. Combining these specific studies with the millions of data points already created by diabetics using existing tracking applications like Glucose Buddy – an app that keeps a log of the food intake and activity levels of diabetics – could potentially allow for a breakthrough in the field.

Social networking

Although industries outside the tech field can obviously benefit from big data analytics, those within it are seeing endless possibilities for this unprecedented wealth of information. One of the most prominent areas would be social networking sites, which are known for their data storage habits when it comes to user information. Facebook is already using the comments and articles you like on the site to influence the ads you see, but many within the industry think these sites can go even further.

In fact, a recent study from Stanford showed that big data analytics has the potential to understand your personality better than your friends do. The study, which had a computer analyze what kinds of pictures and statuses a person liked on his Facebook page, attempted to find out how well a computer can get to know you personally. What they found was remarkable:

“Forget targeted ads.”

A computer, given only information from Facebook to match up against a personality inventory test of the participant, was able to guess personality patterns better than the participant’s friends and family. While this certainly has quite a lot of implications for sociology and psychology, this study shows the truly limitless power of big data analytics on social networking sites. Forget targeted ads; a properly calibrated machine is now able to comprehend the deepest workings of the human mind.

Although that may sound like something straight out of a dystopian novel, being able to fully understand the personality of an individual is immensely helpful in areas like criminology. Tens of thousands of felons could have their personalities tested in a much shorter time than one-on-one interviews, allowing for law enforcement officials to truly map out the mind of a criminal and discover preventative measures for the future.

The world is in the exploratory stages of big data analytics right now, and it’s really hard to know what’s going to happen next. That being said, it’s pretty obvious analyzing huge amounts of information could have serious benefits for multiple industries. Knowledge is always necessary for a society’s growth, and big data has the power to give people a level of understanding that has never been seen before.

Winter storm in the Midwest highlights need for disaster recovery planning

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Although it came a little later than usual, winter is finally here for much of the United States. Many parts of the U.S. have been blanketed in snow recently, but it would appear the Midwest has received an extra helping. Winter storm Ilias has made its presence known, with its icy fingers reaching from Kansas all the way to Tennessee and beyond.

Thankfully, no deaths have been reported yet as a result of Ilias. That being said, the occurrence of yet another cold and icy winter certainly isn’t welcome, especially for companies trying to maintain business continuity. Heavy storms like Ilias are incredibly threatening toward the livelihood of a business, and organizations should take steps to prepare a disaster recovery plan for them.

“Snow can very easily cause a roof collapse.”

What happens when your facility is damaged?

Although winter storms may not be as flashy or as obviously disruptive as other natural events like tornados, they can still cause some heavy damage to your company’s building. Snow may not seem heavy to you, but that’s only because you’ve only ever picked up enough to make a snowball. When it begins to pile high on your facility, snow can very easily cause a roof collapse if left unchecked.

What’s more, extremely heavy winter storms have been known to cause power outages. Nemo, a massive blizzard that ravaged the Northeast in 2013, caused the outage of more than 650,000 businesses and homes in the area, according to USA Today. The massive power of this particular blizzard shows that your business is completely open to the elements. The building housing your company simply cannot be 100 percent protected against the weather, and as such you’ll need a disaster recovery plan for when things go wrong.

What about when people can’t get to the office?

While damage to your office building would be terrible, everything contained there is just stuff. The part of your organization that really matters is the people working every day to further your business. Your employees should be your first concern when thinking of a disaster recovery solution for winter storms, as commuting to work in snowy conditions is incredibly dangerous.

Winter ice can result in car wrecks. The road can be a dangerous place in the winter.

Ilias emphasized this point recently when the roads near Kansas City froze over, causing multiple car accidents in the metropolitan area, according to KMBC. When storms get this bad and having your people come into the office becomes a liability, will your business be able to function? You obviously don’t want your employees to be in harm’s way, but how can you keep up business continuity if none of your employees have access to work-related resources?

You need a disaster recovery plan now

Waiting until tragedy strikes your business to make a disaster recovery plan is like putting your seatbelt on after a car accident: The damage has already been done. Anyone who doesn’t have protection against events like winter storms should absolutely be looking into disaster recovery solutions. Thankfully, ISG Technology can help you on your journey toward a more prepared workplace.

Check out ISG Technology’s page on disaster recovery planning and contact a DR expert today!

ISG Technology: Who we are

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We’ve spent a lot of time on this blog discussing what ISG’s services can do for you, as well as what kinds of specific problems we can fix. We’ve even done an opinion piece here and there about current trends within IT. What we haven’t done so far is explain what kind of a company we are on a more personal level.

As a modern company, it’s really important to us that you not only understand what we do, but who we are. In an effort to fully introduce ourselves to you, we’d like to explain the three guiding principles that drive our company’s innovation each and every day: people, technology and service.

“People come first.”

People

When it comes to business, even the business of technology and machines, people come first. When we’re considering initiating a business relationship with a company, the first thing we do is try to fully understand the people who work there.

The reason we do this is simple: We can’t figure out how to fix your problem if we don’t know anything about who you are and what you need from us.

For the average managed services provider, solving an issue starts with what the MSP can do to fix the problem, followed by how the company is specifically going to solve it and finally finishing with why that particular situation was a problem in the first place. While this gets the job done most of the time, we at ISG think these companies have it backwards.

We begin our problem analysis by first figuring out why this obstacle is in your way. Starting here works better because it allows us to fully understand all aspects of your particular situation, without coming in with any preconceived notions. After this, we begin to work on how we’re going to fix the problem, followed by a full and detailed investigation into what the actual problem is.

What this means is that you can rest assured ISG will solve the problem you’re actually having, and not the one you think you’re experiencing. While you may think you need simple malware removal – something ISG could easily provide for you – it may turn out that you actually need comprehensive firewall protection services. By figuring out why a situation is a problem for you first, we can diagnose the root cause of your dilemma and provide a solution based on your company’s specific needs.

Technology

Technology is evolving at a truly remarkable rate. The Pew Research Center found that in 2015, about 68 percent of American adults owned a smartphone. In 2011, that number was closer to 35 percent. In four short years, smartphone usage had almost doubled, showing how fully technology has been integrated into our everyday lives.

Technology is everywhere, and with around 84 percent of your American clients identifying as Internet users, being on the forefront of this revolution is absolutely vital to stay profitable. That being said, keeping up with the latest and greatest in technological innovation is extremely hard when you’re trying to run a business.

To anyone working outside of IT, something like server virtualization can sound like magic. Just wrapping your head around the concept of fitting multiple, virtual machines on a single server can be impossible if you don’t understand the finely tuned technology behind it.

Thankfully, our team of highly trained tech wizards can make this magically complex technology simple and easy to comprehend. With ISG, you can rest assured that you’re getting the technology your business needs, from experts who truly understand it.

ISG tech experts are extremely knowledgeable. Our tech wizards can help bring the magic of modern technology to your business.

Service

Although you obviously want a cursory understanding of the technology you’re investing in, we know that you want IT solutions to just work. You don’t want your business goals to be hampered by constantly having to figure out what’s going wrong with the services provided to you, and as such, ISG has always been focused on providing a quality service to all of our clients.

Whether it’s disaster recovery services, or even online backup of your mission-critical data, we value giving the businesses we work with the best product we can. Investing in ISG is investing in consistency, and nothing is more important to us than making sure your IT problems get solved as efficiently and as effectively as possible.

If you’d like to learn how ISG can help bring your business to the next level, make sure to check out the list of managed services we offer on our homepage.





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