ICT Consultancy

The world of business is a profoundly competitive one, where you find yourself relying more and more on computers and the Internet to help your business thrive and grow. Most small businesses don't have a dedicated ICT department that manages IT requirements, quite frankly with the right external IT partner, you shouldn't need to.

I've partnered and work with a number of competing Blue Chip companies, Open Source organisations and can facilitate many solutions myself, so I have a wide range of expertise and support to leverage on finding the correct solutions for your business needs.

ICT should empower your business to achieve more, even with a limited budget. Star Office Systems was setup with start-up, small and medium businesses in mind, it is myr aim to strive for what's best for you. Many "IT consultants" come with their own hidden agenda or only have there balance sheet in mind. I'll guide you through many of the tough challenges, with varied solutions for each.

IT has become vital in business, however it's developing faster than any other industry, below are some examples of areas your business may benefit from or may require guidance.

Challenges facing small and medium businesses.

Business continuity

Imagine for a moment what would happen to your business if it was hit with a flood or a fire, would it survive? What contingency do you have in place in such an event? Business continuity is a vast subject, covering every eventuality, so the logistical cost can run into the thousands.

The trick is to enable your key business activities to function, so what areas need to be considered, ICT is one area, a big one too. With many ways to accomplish the same goal, the right decisions are very important.

Remote or flexible working

With the price of fuel on an ever upward direction and the roads becoming more and more congested, reducing travel in the workplace is a consideration that needs to be taken seriously.  Getting the best people for your business means you need to look further and further away, so wouldn't remote working be a better way to achieve this?

Virtual machines or terminal services and VPN have become more effective for businesses, so who could benefit from remote working in your office?

Backup and disaster recovery

Business data can be a valuable asset, does your business take and monitor daily backups? With the correct systems in place your IT systems could be back up and running within hours. It's widely known that loss of business data can be catastrophic to operations and potentially business ending.

Having daily backups is a regular occurrence these days, having hourly backups would make restoration much more effective.

IT as a service

Something gaining more and more momentum in business is software as a service, this enables more flexible use of software, without the need to worry about the inner workings of the software or configurations.

The concept is similar to utilities, users don't need to know anything about electricity when plugging something into the mains. This is the direction much of IT is going, outsourcing your needs to an external provider to deliver service levels you request.

Cost cutting practices

Depending on your current setup and future requirements, cost savings in communications and it can be very substantial.

IT solutions can enable lean operation of your business, understanding IT and communications bills can be difficult, however failure to do so can lead to paying for services that you no longer need or require.

Greener IT solutions

Energy efficiency has become an important priority for business, computing technology has a number of methods to achieve this goal.

Computer components have begun to consume less power, data-centre or cloud computing servers have begun to claw back centralised processing tasks using virtualisation technologies.

Social Networking

"Social Networking" means something different to everybody, some see social networking as being something solely for after work, others see it as another way to get the business message out... The truth is that the Social Networking/Media revolution is exactly that, the decision for your business is where do you fit in?

Firms are seeing real value in contributing to the social arena, from business/contact networking to blogging and even tweeting.

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Get in touch to arrange a meeting or just chat about your requirements...