by David J. Moorman

Wouldn't it be nice if the cost of IT was always an exact fit for your needs?

Chances are, if you aren't paying for your IT on a per-user basis billing model, you are paying too much. A per-user IT contract is an all-inclusive, holistic way of contracting your IT. The per-user model gives you the ability to dynamically scale your IT consumption up and down on a monthly basis. By including all of the hardware and software required that a business needs for an employee, businesses can ensure they are paying just the right amount for their IT solution. It will give your IT infrastructure unprecedented flexibility and alleviate the risk of building to much or not enough capacity. The steep costs of investing in depreciating hardware and software goes away, and you simply pay for the IT services as you need them. The ability to scale up and down in the "New Normal" business world we live in offers you the flexibility you need now and in the future.

Growing Pains

Often, a 30 person business will build an infrastructure for 40 people. This means buying 40 PCs, 40 licenses for all of their software, and enough server and storage that will handle 40 people. Then they have a great quarter and business grows. Hiring employees can be a painful process in general but for IT there can be added pain of scalability. Adding 5 or 10 more computers with all of the added applications and services can be just as difficult as creating the original 30 user infrastructure. You even run the possibility of outgrowing your initial infrasturture setup.

With a per-user IT solution model, you can throw these worries out the door. As your business grows and you need more IT capacity and capabilities, adding to the infrastructure is easy.. Per-users IT solutions mean you can set up 10 or 20 more PC's fully licensed, and customized to your business. You don’t even have to think about it.

Downsizing

In other more unfortunate circumstances, you may have to make the difficult decision to downsize your business. Traditionally, with less people in your organization, you are still paying for the original capacity of your infrastructure. 25 of your 40 employees remain, but you are still left paying for a 40 computers and licenses. You are stuck with your depreciating technology and have lost your ROI on that initial investment.

Contracting IT as a per-user service will help to take the sting out of downsizing. Instead of sunk costs in IT, you can adjust your contract and be able to pay for one or 10 less users. You aren't stuck with the hardware, licensing, or expensive servers and storage that you do not need anymore. The office can downsize with the changing needs of your business regardless of size.

One-Size Fits All

A per-user IT model can ensure your IT is just the right size for your business needs. The flexibility will allow you to have more time and money for concentrating on the parts of business that matter the most. Instead of being a burden, it will help drive success. With a per-user IT solution you will receive an infrastructure that will always fit your ever-changing business needs.

by David J. Moorman

Technologies that can help drive business operations and efficiency, as opposed to just keeping business operations afloat, are considered competitive technologies. If everyone else is using the same tools and technologies in the same way, it doesn't really provide a competitive advantage. The following technologies aren't currently being utilized by everyone, but they will be probably be in the future:

Sales Automation systems

Sales Automation systems are at the top of many technology executives to-do lists and if they aren't, they should be for 2011. The goal of a Sales Automation system is to give a company the ability to generate more qualified sales opportunities, more effectively and to increase the close rate on those opportunities.
One popular example of a Sales Automation system that provides a competitive advantage is Salesforce.com. The implementation and integration of Salesforce with other systems can help to increase automation, Business Intelligence and communication. Services such as Google Adwords, Facebook, twitter, chat and other social media platforms can integrate with Salesforce.com to generate more opportunities and in the end more sales.

Business Intelligence

Easily readable, real-time business data helps executives make decisions faster, better, and more accurately. Business Intelligence is the collection of data usally from multiple sources and parsed and displayed in a pre defined format. B.I. Systems help to analize the data for questions like:
How many sales occurred today?...by which representative?...to what customers?
What were today’s margins?
What are current inventory levels?
To answer these questions, systems record, create, and organize historical data. This data can be packaged together and displayed into a dashboard or used for reporting purposes.

Data Analytics

Diving deeper into your data to answer very specific questions requires a system that can tap into the troves of data collected by a data warehousing systems. For example, Data Analytics would be able to determine how many resources a customer is requiring from your business. Should you raise rates for some customers and lower them for others? Data Analytics would make complex questions much easier to answer.
Are the customers that are requiring the most of your services generating profit? If so, do you need to allocate more resources for those clients? Should you hire more people to provide adequate service?

Being able to drill down deep into the data helps to reduce the risk of uncertainty. These systems increase confidence in your decisions which translates into a competitive advantage in every scenario.

Social Media

Social media can be used in IT to help market and sell more products. With social media integrated into sales automation systems, you will be able to track where leads are generated, who’s buying your services, and who’s reading your company’s communications. Social media with increased automation can tailor marketing messages to a very specific audience.

Integrated Systems

While each of these systems by themselves can benefit a business, it’s when they all work together that their true power is realized. Ultimately, they empower people by reducing workload and increasing knowledge. When used together you can know exactly who your clients are and what they want. This knowledge can be used to find the most efficient path to balancing the needs of your business and your clients. An integrated IT system can be the competitive advantage your company needs to set it apart from the pack.

Roswell, Georgia – February 22, 2011 – DynaSis, Atlanta’s premier provider of IT services and support for small and medium businesses (SMBs), announced today the opening of a data center in Phoenix, Arizona. The data center will provide instant failover for clients with our HOT Disaster recovery service. Phoenix will also act as a redundant backup site for our data farms in the Atlanta data center as well as primary support for west coast clients.

“Phoenix is the number one location in the U.S. for the establishment of data centers because of the minimal weather-related interruptions in that market,” states Dave Moorman, president of DynaSis. “The lack of electrical storms, hurricanes and tornadoes is one of the primary reasons we chose to locate our new facility there.”

The Phoenix data center provides a redundant setup for DynaSis’ primary Atlanta data center location. In the case of interruptions due to weather or other acts of God, DynaSis customers served in the Atlanta data center would have their operations transferred to and supported by the Phoenix data center.

“For our customers, the transfer of services would be seamless and virtually undetectable,” explains Moorman.

Like the Atlanta data center, the Phoenix data center provides 24/7/365 secure access via biometrics. Robust power is delivered via four 10 megawatt feeds from the utility substation to the facility along two different geographic paths. DynaSis’ infrastructure is redundantly fed from two power distribution panels (PDBs) on separate distribution paths. A bi-directional closed water loop ensures efficiently pumping of chilled water to our facility from two sides while removing datacenter heat. 36-inch raised floors provide increased capability for air circulation and cooling of equipment than the traditional 24-inch raised floors common in many data centers.

“Continuity of business operations is critical to the livelihood of most firms,” concludes Moorman. “Providing this robust backup data center ensures business continuity for our clients. Our mission is to provide fortune 500 level IT to the SMB. This investment furthers our commitment to that strategy.”

About DynaSis
DynaSis is a managed IT service provider for small and medium sized businesses in Atlanta, Georgia. DynaSis specializes in offering on-premise and on-demand managed IT service plans, managed hosting and professional equipment installation. For more information about DynaSis services visit www.dynasis.com.

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We announced our new partnership with IP phone system provider Fonality and VoIP Monitor covered the story.

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Yahoo® News picked up our article: DynaSis' Hosted IT Solution Kept Interra's Atlanta Employees "Fully Functioning During Snow Storm." This article featured our client Interra and how we were able to keep their international business up and running when the rest of Atlanta was down.

Read the full article here.

TAG published an article about ITility by DynaSis's 5th birthday. Here's to TAG and our next 5 birthdays!

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Our new data center space at the 55 Marietta Street carrier hotel in downtown Atlanta was given mention by Data Center Knowledge.

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DynaSis expands its managed IT support agreement with global solar cell manufacturer Suniva

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With the rise of many different devices like iPhone and Android, Windows isn’t the only player in the game anymore. It’s cool to be a Mac and we get that at DynaSis. Using ITility by DynaSis cloud based services, we can now offer clients the support they need no matter which platform they choose. ITility by DynaSis uses a web portal to access your company data, files, and applications, so as long as your device can access the Internet, you can get to your work. Best of all, it delivers the same experience on all platforms so you don’t have to re-learn how to use it on all your devices or install additional plug-ins to make it work. So whether you are a Mac or a PC, you can still access your data and work as seamlessly as ever.