Hi Everyone!
Hope you had great summer & that business is getting back to normal once again. Just a quick newsletter on:
1. Annual IT Review & Planning – Book now (for Managed Services Clients)
2. IT Support, Ticketing, Knowledge Base, Invoicing changes & Reports
3. Microsoft price increase – We can save you up to $6 per user.
4. New software for Data Security, Office Backup & Data Loss Prevention
5. Why businesses (including ours) are moving from Cloud back to Servers!
Let’s have a catch up in May/June!
It’s been ages so I’d love to organise a catch up with you. Just a friendly chat where we can review your IT, your invoices, software/hardware spend & look at how we can help digitally, physically, & financially. We’ve had a huge 6 months of training & partnering up globally. We’re ready to introduce new services that can help streamline your business, protect your data, & save you money. Book a catch up today!
IT Support
Another quick reminder to please only use the portal or the support email to request support. The portal ensures billing accuracy, increases the speed of support, provides accountability, allows us to run accurate reports on your IT & is used for legal reasons too.
Submit your support requests here:
Support Portal: https://helpme.bridgeit.com.au
Support Email: support@bridgeit.com.au
Portal Access – Most users email addresses are already in the portal. You can use the “forgot password” button to set your own password. You’ll be able to track all your current & past tickets here, as well as provide extra information on your ticket if you need to share screenshots or videos.
Knowledge Base – You’ll find a great Knowledge Base in the portal. KB articles are step by step guides to help you fix all the most common issues. Worth a look! Topics covered include: internet, backup, restore, security, Windows, Microsoft Office, printer drivers, warranty contact details plus general tips & tricks to make life easier.
Tickets & Invoicing – I’ve had multiple requests to remove ticket data from invoices to keep them tidy so that will come into play this month. The person who receives the invoices has access to the entire company’s tickets & is welcome to view them at any stage. If any other users need this please let me know & I’ll add them.
Reports – Our billing, monitoring & management tools provide us with a whole range of PDF reports that show a range of things from hardware, software, ticketing, security, backup, company audits, patch status, inventory, customer health & many more. These can be scheduled to be sent any hour, day, month etc required. I can provide samples or set up automatic reports if you’re interested. Happy to bring some to our next meeting too!
Not signed up to a Managed IT Service & Support yet? From $33/month! Our Managed IT Service is a comprehensive service that includes everything you need
Microsoft Licensing
After 4 years, Microsoft have finally increased their license fees by 10 to 20%. We have ways of helping, including switching to an annual commitment, removing unused licenses & creating free shared accounts too.
We have lots of new security/backup software that integrates with Office 365. In some cases we can change licensing levels & integrate the 3rd party packages to reduce cost but increase security. Up to $6 per user per month on some licenses. It’s something we can review at our next meeting. Have you booked in yet? More about our new software below!
Data Security
A big focus this year, as with every year, is on protecting your computer, server, & cloud data. $80 million dollars was lost in bad email security alone last year, which is a small fraction of the $33 billion in reported Australian cybercrimes. We have been enhancing our security stack offering with new partnerships that can help keep you & your client’s data safe.
NEW – Office Backup –
NEW – Data Loss Prevention & Security
These features can be added on to your current subscriptions for a couple of dollars. We can protect digital spaces such as Office 365, Google Workspaces, Outlook, Gmail, Slack, Teams, Dropbox, Box, Sharefile, OneDrive & Google Drive to name a few. All of which are FISMA, GDPR, HIPAA, DSS, SOX & FERPA compliant. Reach out for more info & pricing!
We discuss why some businesses are moving from cloud back to servers! (We have too)
Cost, simplicity, security, internet speeds. Things have changed in the past few years.
Servers – The role of a small business server is usually to be a central place that you can securely store your data & have quick access to it. Redundant hard drives & backups also protect it. Technology has advanced & prices have come down dramatically to make servers a very cost-effective part of your IT in 2022. Local files load/open/close/save faster. New VPN technology makes it easy for you to connect to the server & access your files as if you were sitting in the office. You own your server, it becomes capital expenditure, you control the data, & we can protect it as good as, if not better, than cloud. I use the HPE Microserver Gen 10 Plus at my office & several of my clients’ offices too. $1500 for the server & a few hundred dollars for drives. Low cost, low maintenance & a big win in my book. This fits 4 hard drives & has full server security & functionality. A great option for small offices with a few staff.
Cloud – After a few years of mainstream cloud, some issues have been popping up, which most of you will be aware of. Microsoft bumped their prices up 20% this year. Slow internet speeds cause chaos with file syncing, as does lots of staff syncing lots of files at the same time. No internet means no files. Onedrive & syncing issues are common. Microsoft also recommend that you don’t have more than 300,000 files. While this sounds like a lot, I know most of my clients have more than that!
It’s worth doing a full review to see which solution is the best fit for you & we’re happy to help you in the process!