KTC Consulting Inc.

    Understanding Managed Services and How They Benefit SMBs   Small to medium sized businesses (SMBs) receive a lot of calls each day from slick sales people peddling the next technology trend that's going to save them money and revolutionize how they do business. They're all too quick to caution that if you don't listen to them, you'll fall behind the times, and eventually be swimming in a sea of debt and out of business.   No doubt you've heard, or you've at least read about, the benefits of managed services. Managed services refer to clearly defined outsourced IT services delivered to you at predictable costs. You know the exact IT services you'll be getting and what you'll pay for them. There is no surprise sky-high bill for services rendered. So are solicitation calls that pertain to managed services worth listening to? We think so. Then again, we're in the managed services industry. There may be a bit of a bias here.   How Managed Service Prov

    Are Managed IT Services Right For You? A Few Things to Consider   How do you get a small business to recognize the value of manages IT services? In the start-up environment, we encounter an eclectic bunch of personality types. There is a reason people become entrepreneurs or C-level execs. When we meet the owners or decision makers at smaller companies and organizations, we can tell right away why they're where they are. They're visionaries. They're risk takers. They're competitive. They want to be in charge.   Therefore, they aren't always quick to place the fate of their business technology in the hands of a third party. They've come as far as they have by being in control and they're hesitant to give up that control. But we've learned a few things along the way.   For example, the Type A personality is highly independent but also very competitive. So we tap into the competitive advantage that managed IT services gives them.   The Type B personalit

    Breaking News: Downtime Kills Small Businesses   Downtime is bad news for any business whether big or small.   A recent two-hour New York Times' downtime occurrence sent Twitter ablaze and their stock price plummeting.   Google going down for one to five hours resulted in lost revenue up to $500,000 and decreased overall web traffic by 40%.   We know what you're thinking. Holy crap, Google makes $100,000 an hour? Yeah... insane, huh?   While the hourly cost of downtime for a small-to-medium sized business won't be nearly as large as that astronomical Google figure, downtime is often more detrimental to smaller companies. Smaller enterprises are more susceptible to downtime and are neither large nor profitable enough to sustain its short and long-term effects.   Downtime Leads to Unhappy/Unproductive Employees   Even the happiest of employees become dissatisfied when they can't perform basic day-to-day job functions or properly service customers or clients.   While s

    8 Cold Hard Truths for SMBs Not Worried About Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity   The foundation of any successful business continuity solution is the ability to retrieve data from any point in time from anywhere. When the topic of data recovery and business continuity comes up, you get the feeling that many decision makers at smaller businesses and organizations wish they could channel their inner six year old, simply cover their ears, and sing "La, la, la. I Can't Hear You. I'm Not Listening."   Everybody thinks bad things only happen to other people. Just because we hear about a fatal car accident on the morning news, doesn't mean we fixate on that news when we ourselves get into a car and drive to work.   So no matter how many times the owner or executive of a small to midsize business (SMB) hears of other small businesses being crippled by hurricanes, tornados, fires, or flooding, they aren't necessarily overcome with fear to the point that th