Starting A Business – Need An IT Company? (Questions/Answers)

3 Consulting Questions To Ask The IT Company Before You Land That First Client

Setting up a new business for the first time is stressful. There are so many decisions to make; you might feel your new idea won’t get off the ground. Because there is so much legwork to do first before you get started. But in the back of your mind you know you must lay the groundwork in the beginning to grow your business.

Part of laying that stable foundation is bringing on partners or associates that can make strategic decisions, that will start your business off on the right foot, keep it running smoothly and work hard at driving costs down.

For starters, an IT company is the first choice most start-ups choose to consult with to help them stay connected. They realize their customers are all online, and they want an IT consulting firm to make it easy to get online, stay connected, back up their data, keep it secure, and advise them what hardware and software to use; that saves them time and keeps the business running smoothly.

1. Do I Need a Landline or VoIP Solution?
   

Traditionally brick and mortar type businesses rely on landlines to receive and make calls. But VoIP phone services (known as Voice Over Internet Protocol) has become the new standard and superior solution regarding cost savings, phone plans, and ease of use for small to midsize businesses.

With VoIP services, you can do what traditional landlines do. Make and receive calls. But here’s where landlines stop, and VoIP services continue. Have you ever made a Skype call? That’s VoIP technology. You can add unlimited lines without extra fees or updating your hardware. That’s VoIP technology.

But, if your internet is spotty, VoIP phone services will be affected. You may receive poor call quality, and if there is a power outage, you will not be able to use your internet connection to make calls. In this instance is when a landline is more stable, for they do not rely on electricity as a VoIP phone does.

2. Do I Need Microsoft Office 365 or Google G Suite?
   

As a start-up business, this office suite software question is often asked by new business owners. Below we’ve listed what each productivity toolset offers and their month to month plans. As for current plan pricing that is always subject to change without notice. It is best to check with the software provider for pricing, discounts, and promotions when you are ready to buy.

Office 365 and G Suite productivity suites each offer natural user interfaces, simple to use applications, and plenty of storage space.

Office 365 and G Suite software deployments:

• G Suite is cloud-only
• Microsoft provides two; desktop and cloud

In Office 365 and G Suite you can create:

• Documents
• Presentations
• Spreadsheets
• Work as a group
• Have Video Conferencing

Office 365 and G Suite monthly per-user plans:

G Suite offers three month to month plans per user:

• Enterprise
• Business
• Basic

Office 365 offers seven month to month plans per user:

• Business
• Business Premium
• Business Essentials
• Enterprise E1
• Enterprise E3
• Enterprise E5
• Enterprise ProPlus

As you review your business plan and how you want your staff to be more productive, the office suite, productivity tools choices, listed above gives you a general idea of what options you have. The primary question to start with is, “Do I want one or two ways to deploy our office suite?”

3. Do I Buy Dedicated Servers or Go With Something Like Amazon Web Services (AWS)?
   

Buying dedicated servers or using Amazon Web Services cloud hosting is not a decision you want to make quickly or take lightly. First off, dedicated servers are not all created equally and are very diverse. In some respects, AWS might be inferior to your company server and how you had it set up, but far superior to your competitor’s equipment installation.

So, it’s not a decision as to which is better, but what’s right for your particular business and its operational needs.

The top three things to look at are Reliability, Performance, and Cost difference.

• Reliability – When a dedicated server crashes your backup doesn’t kick in. The equipment has to be repaired first before it’s up and running. When a cloud server crashes it jumps to another machine, and your backup does kick in because data is captured from multiple devices.
• Performance – Both are a close match with speed. It’s the “Dirty” instances that can hang up a dedicated server instead of the cloud counterpart. “Dirty” instances are those temp or program files no longer needed, building up and still running on the server.
• Cost Difference – On a dedicated server you pay a monthly set fee on the package you chose. With cloud computing, you pay-as-you-use for the amount of storage and time you used the storage.

In this question alone, there is so much more material to cover that speaking with an IT Consultant for additional details and data findings, you won’t go wrong with a one-on-one consultation.

Like this article? Check out: SQL Servers On Amazon Web Services Or Microsoft Azure (Ratings/Reviews) or Azure To AWS Migrations (Questions/Answers) and Selecting A Cloud Service Provider (Questions/Answers).

Author: Aaron White, Date: 24th July 2018