
Wm. Randol Womack, DDS
Editorial Director,
Orthotown Magazine |
As an amateur "computer geek" I feel pretty confident about keeping my presentation laptop at home updated and running efficiently. However, when it came to implementing 17 workstations and one server at my office, I found that I was totally in the dark about how to maintain efficiency, security and virus/spyware protection.
After being in our new office for almost two years, our systems were grossly exposed to all sorts of complications and potential problems. How did I discover this? When we had a computer issue a few months ago I asked one of my patient's parents, who works for a large company in Phoenix, if he could help us. Since he had no time, he recommended a very savvy information technology (IT) expert who had recently left a large corporation and had moved close to our office.
The expert (aka "KK") offered to fix our current problem and since she lives close to the office I decided to give her the job. It was fixed quickly and she even performed some follow-up work for us at no charge. However, we did incur a $75/hour charge for that "fix" and some other subsequent "fixes." We started using her as our "break/fix" outsource; when something would break, she would fix it.
In the big business world, company IT personnel respond to computer problems, ensure security and alleviate vulnerabilities for the computer systems in the company at considerable payroll expense. Recently, KK developed an enterprise level Managed Services Program (MSP), similar to what Fortune 500 companies use, but scaled down for small businesses. The services were the same but the cost was very reasonable. The unique thing about her program is that she can provide a generous number of services, remotely from her office (www.glendaleit.com), without even coming into our office. She also offered this program on a flat monthly fee, based on the number of work stations/servers in the office – which was very appealing to me. She said the program's main feature is that it is a "proactive" program, directed toward insuring the stability and safety of our computer systems to prevent problems, instead of the "break/fix" approach we were currently using.
What an eye-opener! When I reviewed her first service report on our system, our server and all of our workstations lacked the latest Microsoft Service Pack plus critical and major patches. Our server was missing the Service Pack plus 27 patches! KK spent 14 hours applying the SP and patches to our system. Now, here is the good news; with the previous "break/fix" arrangement my bill would have been more than $1,000. However our new service agreement, based on the number of computers we have, is $270 per month – a quarter of the "break/fix" cost of this one service incident. So now we have "computer health insurance" in place for a flat monthly fee to make sure we don't have a major security breach or catastrophe going forward. And it is done without someone even coming into the office. Now I don't have to worry about becoming a better "geek" and I can focus on my real talent, straightening teeth. So, how secure is your security? Do you really know? |