ATECH MSP Blog

Technology is important to most small businesses today, especially when looking to improve it affordably. That’s why when making technology decisions, you should consider the following solid practices.

Software is a major part of doing business nowadays. Not only do you depend on it to manage core functions of your business, that software can be purchased in multiple different methods. When choosing management software, your business needs to choose one that fits your needs, returns long-term benefits, and provides a platform that will help you build your company. Let’s go through some considerations you’ll need to consider when choosing management software.

With Windows 10, you have no shortage of features and capabilities to take advantage of. One such capability: the use of a virtual desktop. Found near the Start button in your taskbar, the Task View button enables you to create and manage these virtual desktops, which we’ll discuss here.

As commonly happens with any disaster, COVID-19 has inspired no short supply of scams. While these scams initially focused upon the relief funds that were delivered to people to help sustain the suffering economy, the ongoing vaccine distribution efforts have given those behind these efforts a new means of attack.

Recently, a story broke in Florida that sounds like something out of a terse action film: a hacker managed to access a water treatment facility and subjected the Pinellas County water supply with increased levels of sodium hydroxide. While onsite operators were able to correct the issue right away and keep the public safe from danger, this event is the latest in a line of cyberattacks directed at public utilities. Let’s consider this unpleasant trend.

Finding ways to save money is something that most entrepreneurs take pride in. Today, as costs of doing business continue to climb, VoIP can present the business owner with the rare solution that actually saves them money. Hosted VoIP, in particular—where your phone system is hosted in the cloud—presents an innovative and straightforward way to reduce your business’ operational costs. Let’s take a look at some ways it goes about doing this.

Email is undeniably a useful tool, but it can be a real drag on productivity and a hindrance to manage. Then again, there are some messages that you absolutely need to keep track of as they contain sensitive information. Gmail makes keeping messages under your thumb simple.

Novelty holidays have been all the rage for the past couple years. The thing is that if you are going to celebrate World Kimchi Day on November 22 or its sister holiday, World Cabbage Day on February 17, you either really like cabbage, or you really like holidays. With so many people using technology as a major part of their life and business, it’s no surprise that it is well represented on the holiday calendar. You have a few we’ve already missed: National Technology Day on January 6, Data Privacy Day on January 28, and National Clean Out Your Computer Day on February 8, but there are three important IT “holidays” this month. Let’s take a look at them now.

Google search is synonymous with searching the internet, but that hasn’t stopped them from constantly innovating the service. One of the most recent updates is to give users more context for the content that returns on search results. This works to protect users from potentially clicking on websites that could contain threats. Today, we discuss this innovation and how it will look to the end-user.

With cloud computing being utilized by a majority of businesses nowadays, it’s not as big of a surprise when one wants to move files from a locally-hosted server to a cloud server; or, from a cloud server to a new cloud server. This presents a fair amount of problems that you have to be mindful of if you want to move the data and applications over properly. Today, we’ll take a look at some problems you may face, and how to make sure they don’t weigh down your next cloud migration. 

While looking to the past isn’t often an idea tied to information technology, there are times when it can play a valuable role in your strategy for it. Let’s look at some modern IT concepts that rely on foundational ideas set back in the day.

A business that has workers that are above average at maintaining productivity is typically a successful business. There are an endless number of suggestions on how to be and remain productive, and how to sustain that productivity. One thing that isn’t typically mentioned in all of that self-help advice is the role that patience plays in productivity. This month we thought we would do just that.

If you’re trying to share an idea in a presentation, adding a brief video clip can make it very simple to communicate with your audience. With this in mind, it is quite helpful that Microsoft PowerPoint makes it simple to embed a YouTube video directly into your presentation, whether you’re using PowerPoint 365 or PowerPoint 2016.

You’d think that the healthcare industry would be at the very cutting-edge when it comes to information technology implementation. That isn’t always the case. One technology that developers are really looking to take advantage of in the healthcare space is blockchain. The technology behind cryptocurrency is being used to help patients better control their care. Let’s take a brief look now. 

In our last blog we gave you some advice on what to do if your phone has gone missing, but if it has been stolen or lost for good, there are more pressing issues than the anger and loss you feel; you need to ensure that you and the people you do business with are protected. Let’s take a look at what you need to do to make that happen.

Imagine for a second you are out to a socially distant dinner date with the friends that you barely get to see. You wrap up dinner and say your goodbyes and when you get to your car you realize that you don’t have your phone. COMPLETE PANIC! Your whole life is on your phone. Now imagine that when you went back to the restaurant to get your phone, it wasn't anywhere to be found. We’ll talk you through how to proceed. 

Of all the technologies currently used by businesses, the Internet is a strong contender for the most important. Regardless of their size, many businesses invest thousands each month into online Software-as-a-Service solutions as a means of more affordably equipping their users. Let’s talk for a moment about another cloud platform that has seen some advancement: Infrastructure-as-a-Service.

Businesses that don’t see after their vulnerabilities are just asking to be breached. That’s the consensus view in the IT industry. It’s disconcerting, then, to consider how many businesses don’t actively assess their IT security, especially considering how much these platforms change from year-to-year. Today, we’ll briefly discuss what a security and compliance audit is, and why we think you need one. 

With a business’ data being such a priority nowadays, protecting it against all circumstances needs to be appropriately attended to. One fundamental component of this protection is the implementation of a proper backup strategy. Let’s go over the most foundational element of a successful backup, and how we recommend businesses to accomplish it: redundancy.

In business, building a strategy that produces results is the goal. If you are looking, you can find all types of stories about entrepreneurs changing the tried-and-true methods and finding abrupt (and sometimes sustainable) success. These stories may even have you questioning the way that you do business, especially if things aren’t going terribly well. Rest assured, that the best thing that can happen is to build processes that promote consistency.