Archive for category: Managed IT

Save Money, Improve Efficiency, and Survive the Economic Downturn with Better IT

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Businesses in Canada recently reported that they expect an unpredictable economic outlook for at least an additional 12 months, thanks to the oil and gas price drop that is severely impacting our region.

This dismal report on the future of our economy has everyone worried, but it also presents an opportunity for every business in every industry to reevaluate their approach to operations.

From analyzing inventories and renegotiating contracts, businesses can take this opportunity to develop lean practices that not only serve them well during economic downturns but will create better profitability as the economy improves.

From an IT perspective, the same reevaluation may be necessary for most businesses, especially those still relying on legacy systems or paying exorbitant costs to maintain and store their own on-site servers.

We’ve outlined a couple ways every business can take to operate more efficiently from an IT perspective:

Reduce Costs by Eliminating or Upgrading IT Assets

If you are regularly expensing money for repairs to equipment, consider the cost savings you can realize by converting to leased equipment or off-site, cloud-based storage.

This shifts the cost of maintenance and repair and creates an opportunity to shift more of your costs from capital expenses to operating expenses.

Increase Efficiency with Flexible, Customized IT Solutions

Cloud-based applications are scalable and customizable, giving you the flexibility to pay only for what you need while providing a risk-mitigating solution for business continuity.

This allows you to access your data and operate your business from anywhere.

The economy will recover, but until it does, we’re dedicated to helping Calgary- and Alberta-based businesses make changes now to remain competitive, flexible, and ready to face whatever challenges come their way.

We do this by providing essential IT support and customized services designed to meet the needs of your business. The ITeam will work with you to develop a cost-effective and comprehensive IT strategy that will help you survive economically stressful times. Contact us for a free consultation.

Managed IT Services for Better Customer Service

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Managed IT Services for Better Customer ServiceWhen your customers call, they expect you to answer.

When they visit your offices, they expect you to be there.

But more than that, they expect you to be able to provide whatever service they need from you.

Your customers aren’t expecting you to say, “Oh, I’m sorry. We can’t do that today. Our network is down.”

They don’t want to hear, “You’ll have to come back another day; we can’t access our customer information.”

And they certainly do not want to get a phone call from you saying, “Sorry, but you will want to monitor your finances for the next month. We’ve just lost all of your personal information to hackers.”

No, your customers rightfully expect that you will always be available, up and running, and diligently working to protect the information they’ve entrusted to you.

When you consider ways to improve customer service for your company, you may not consider IT support or Managed Services.

More likely, you focus on hiring more people, increasing the amount of training you do and placing emphasis on development.

But one of the easiest ways to improve customer service is to ensure that you are available when your customers need you and that they can trust you enough to continue providing you with the information you need to remain effective.

The IT – Customer Connection

Managed IT services, while on its face an IT support solution, is really a phenomenal customer service tool.

Managed Services are IT support services designed to proactively manage your network, to optimize performance and enhance security.

Your network is monitored every day, with behind-the-scenes experts intercepting and addressing problems before they impact your customers, reducing downtime and enhancing security measures to keep your business operational and your customer data safe.

Benefits of Managed Services

  • Services can be customized to meet the needs of your business and customer base.
  • Services are proactive, not reactive, so the focus is on prevention, which saves time and money.
  • The cost of IT support is shifted to a more predictable and plannable expense.
  • You enjoy peace of mind and give your customers more confidence since you’re never making excuses or putting them at risk.

Fixed-cost Managed Services from The ITeam will jump-start your cost reductions today and increase your competitive advantage tomorrow. In addition to Managed IT Services, The ITeam is also the Calgary region’s local source for comprehensive IT services, as well as IT products, supplies, and support through Managed IT Services.

Managed IT Services: How The ITeam Can Help

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Managed IT Services: How The ITeam Can Help

We often read about managed services providers offering to ease the pain associated with routine IT support.

Here at The ITeam, however, we’d like you to think about doing what is required to avoid experiencing that pain altogether.

How Do We Help You Avoid Pain?

What happens if you don’t go to the dentist regularly and get your teeth cleaned?

Eventually, you develop cavities that require fillings.

Ignoring cavities could then lead to further infection, which would necessitate a root canal.

You may even have to have a tooth pulled.

There will be pain, swelling, and an exponential cost involved.

To avoid as much of that pain as possible, most people see their dentists every six months to have their teeth cleaned and examined, fixing cavities while they’re just minor nuisances.

Your business IT must likewise take preventative measures against comparable risks.

If you aren’t proactively taking care of your IT, keeping it orderly, secure, and protected, you end up enduring a lot of costly pain.

Managed services are like a dentist for IT support.

Rather than wait until you have a toothache to worry about, we do everything we can to keep you from having one at all.

Managed Services Offers Peace of Mind

To ensure that your business remains operational and competitive in the most cost-effective manner possible, you should take a proactive stance with your network security, systems and application patching.

Employing comprehensive backup and recovery services can ensure that.

Our Managed Services provides businesses with 24-hour monitoring, to immediately identify and correct potential issues as well as to provide remote and onsite maintenance and support.

Benefits of Managed IT Services

One of the biggest benefits of managed services is the cost savings that businesses experience by making business IT support costs more predictable and manageable.

A managed service approach will also provide businesses with comprehensive security, customized backup and recovery solutions, and state-of-the-art cloud storage and hosting.

The ITeam’s Managed Services is a custom solution designed to meet the varied needs of businesses in a variety of industries.

We act as a virtual CIO, partnering with our clients to help them meet their business goals and remain globally competitive.

Fixed-cost Managed Services from The ITeam will jump start your cost reductions today and increase your competitive advantage tomorrow.

In addition to Managed IT Services, The ITeam is also the Calgary region’s local source for comprehensive IT services, as well as IT products, supplies, and support through the On Demand IT Services.

Why Do We Have More Than One DNS Entry?

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Why Do We Have More Than One DNS Entry

Every once in a while, an ISP will have a problem with their DNS server and someone can’t access a website. 

While troubleshooting the problem, we usually get asked: “If the first server doesn’t give the answer I wanted why didn’t it move to the next one in the list?”  

What is DNS?

In the simplest of terms, Domain Name Service (DNS)is the mechanism that translates human-readable names (www.google.ca) into numbers that devices on the internet understand (173.194.33.56). 

If we didn’t have DNS you would have to enter that ugly number in each time you wanted to access the website. 

It’s a lot easier to remember the name.

Why do you have more than one entry? 

Backup. 

The second and possibly third servers on the list are there in case the first can’t be connected to. 

It means that the first server is either dead, not there or missing. 

“Can’t be connected to” is different from “didn’t provide an answer” or “provided the wrong answer”. 

Here’s why.

DNS isn’t a “general consensus” protocol where you ask each server on the list for the same information and then take the “best answer”. 

That would really slow things down and who’s to say the “best answer” was the one you wanted anyway? 

It tries to connect to the first server on the list and, if the connection is successful, it assumes that the answer it gets back is the correct one – even if that information is wrong or empty or nothing returns at all. 

It stops there and doesn’t try the next one on the list. 

It has an answer – whether you like it or not – why would it continue to look? 

However, if that server doesn’t respond (aka dead, not there, missing) your system will try the next DNS server on the list. 

It will keep doing this until it makes a connection or reaches the end of the list. 

End result. 

If the first server is dead and it successfully connects to the second server will it always try the first server for every new request? No. 

Your system will remember which of the servers worked last time and try that one first the next time – right up until you restart – then the process starts over again.

Why would a DNS server allow connections but not give an answer? 

Usually, this is because that server is too busy to respond to your request. 

Bummer for you because you “connected” so the “blank” answer counts.    

Don’t confuse a “blank” answer with the “wrong answer” though. 

There are a number of reasons why a server might provide you with what it thinks is the right information but it’s not what you were looking for. 

The address is in the middle of changing and the server hasn’t updated its copy (cache) with new information being the most common.

Can’t Access a New Subnet Through The VPN?

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Can’t Access a New Subnet Through The VPN

A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a way to securely connect two locations together across the internet.

In this case, we’ll be discussing a Lan-to-Lan connection between two offices.

Lan-to-Lan Connection

Your office is expanding and you’ve run out of IP’s.

You consult your network architect and decide to create a separate subnet, Virtual LAN (VLAN) or zone for a group of machines (e.g. a new floor or a development group).

You and the network architect get the new zone up and running and test the connectivity to the servers and internet successfully.

All is good.

A while later one of the staff on the new subnet tries to access a device at a remote office (say a printer) but it fails.

You check from the server and everything works fine.

When you try and ping the device from the machine it doesn’t respond.

You traceroute it and see that it goes out to the internet instead of through the tunnel.

Why?

The routes are all correct.

You can ping the firewall so you know it’s getting to the right location.

Why won’t it go to the remote branch?

Answer: You forgot to change the VPN tunnel to allow the new subnet to pass to the remote location!

Did you remember to add the new network to the tunnel?

Why do you need to do that?

The VPN tunnel works by matching both the source IP and destination IP to see if it needs to encrypt the traffic.

This match is done against an access control list (ACL).

If the VPN can’t match both sides it ignores the connection and lets the firewall handle it on its own.

Just having a route from the new subnet to the firewall is not enough.

How do I fix it?

In this case, you have “old subnet” connecting to “remote subnet” and you’ll need to add “new subnet” connecting to “remote subnet” to the existing tunnel ACL.

Remember to do this on both sides or it won’t work (you have to allow the traffic on the remote side to come back!).

The resultant ACL will contain instructions for “old subnet” connecting to “remote subnet” and “new subnet” connecting to “remote subnet” (reverse on the remote end).

The user can now happily access the remote device because their IP matches the local end and the destination matches the remote side – the traffic is encrypted and the device is reachable.

How do I modify my VPN tunnel to add the new subnet?

There are so many versions of firewalls that I couldn’t possibly go through them all here.

We would recommend contacting your support vendor for assistance.

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