Why prevention is better than cure when it comes to your IT - Complete IT

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Why prevention is better than cure when it comes to your IT

by | Jul 4, 2016 | Archived Articles

It is a testament to the improving quality of computer hardware that most of us do not worry until something goes wrong. Unfortunately, many IT problems build slowly – in reality, very few are instantaneous and occur without warning.

Take your workgroup email server for instance. The growing volume of emails being sent and received is adding to the amount of data you have to store on a daily basis. Left unchecked, you will eventually hit the upper limits of your storage and processing capacity, at which point everything grinds to a halt. “Suddenly” you lose access to one of your most important communication channels.

However, the problem will have been steadily building for months. A proactive maintenance regime would have flagged this as an issue demanding attention far earlier, allowing your business to assess the available options, including upgrading capacity, or moving to a virtually limitless, Cloud based solution like Microsoft Office 365.

More than simple capacity issues

Proactive monitoring is also useful for identifying serious, low level security issues. Unusual network traffic is sometimes an indication of cybercriminal activity, whilst a huge rise in bandwidth could be caused by a virus, or even system misuse by employees.

Monitoring and reporting on these activities allows you to “see” unreported issues, and provide the basis for further investigation. Being able to spot viral infections early can help to reduce the damage caused to your infrastructure and reputation. And can help to minimise or stop theft of sensitive data.

Building a useful baseline for comparisons

By constantly monitoring for problems, proactive IT support can also help to identify new improvements that will boost your operating efficiency. By baselining activities, you will have solid evidence against which to compare proposed benefits of a new system for instance.

When purchasing new hardware, you need to know how well your existing assets perform before you can conclusively decide whether a proposed upgrade will deliver benefits of significant magnitude to justify the investment. The same is true of software, networking and internet connectivity too.

Ultimately proactive maintenance services help you better understand what you have, and how well your IT systems meet your needs. Investment in proactive maintenance will deliver long term benefits by reducing downtime and wasted IT spend.

For more help and advice on proactive maintenance services, and how they can be used by your business to prevent problems and boost performance, please get in touch.