Professional IT Services that Andromeda Provides for Frankfort, IL Businesses:

Managed IT Services
Frankfort,IL

Andromeda offers a range of IT support plans—anything from month-to-month "time & materials"-based assistance to fixed IT service contracts that permit "no-brainer" conformance to an annual budget. Beyond the functions you would expect from a full-service MSP, you'll have a dedicated C‑CATs team that includes an Account Coordinator directing the same field and remote technicians day-to-day, month-to-month, and even year-to-year to manage your IT network needs.
This isn't simply a glorified Virtual CIO offering. Imagine the cost of hiring your own CIO AND tech team for this same level of customized service and knowledge of your particular (and evolving) network setup!

Cloud Services & Migrations

Typically, the biggest issue you'll face when initiating Cloud IT services is not the services themselves, but rather the proper migration of your existing IT services to the Cloud without loss of functionality, downtime, and scores of other details that could undermine the whole process. Andromeda has a long history of expertise in physical on-premises systems. Don't make the mistake of turning all your current systems over to a "Cloud expert"; we'll save you from a lot of heartache and pain with a virtually seamless Cloud migration from your current setup— whatever it is.

Data Backup & Recovery
Frankfort,IL

It's a crazy world. Literally thousands of people you don't even know attempt to break or steal from systems like yours every day. Good 24/7 monitoring is a first line of defense, of course. But no matter how great and state-of-the-art your defenses are, you'll almost certainly succomb to a successful attack in time. That's why advanced data backup and data recovery need to be tools that you and your IT partner have at the ready from Day 1. Don't be tempted to "shortcut" this element of your network in the name of expediency or to save a few dollars. Ultimately, you'll lose out on both counts with that thinking. You need a complete and integrated solution that addresses every contingency as well as IT professionals who know how to make that happen.

Cyber Security

Not only do we provide multi-tier approaches to your network security, but Andromeda also provides built-for-you solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity devices. We provide, manage and monitor a variety of devices including physical hardware, Cloud-based and hybrid options. Our team actively monitors over 403 servers and 101 physical backup devices in the field. All with 100% local engineers and technicians.

Onsite/Remote Support
Frankfort,IL

Andromeda's team is completely staffed by local technicians near Frankfort,IL. No matter the hour, your issue is resolved quickly and professionally. In fact, 68% of incoming calls are connected to a live technician for immediate response. When a technician isn't available, our average response time is less than 30 minutes. And if that isn't impressive enough, emergency after-hours support response times average less than 10 minutes!

IT Network Management

IT networks are our bread-and-butter. We have provided these services to clients since 1994. Some have continued to rely on us for their evolving network needs since the very beginning. We stand behind our work day to day and year to year because we foster relationships with our client-partners that absolutely demand that of us. It's in our DNA and how we prefer to do business.

AndroPedia Tech Library

As part of our service, it is important to keep our client-partners well informed on IT developments, news, and best practices. Here is just a sampling of typical items from our AndroPedia^SM library archive:

Microsoft Teams helps professionals connect and stay productive by bringing all documentation, communication and collaboration into one space. If you are like us, most of your day-to-day communication and activity is somehow tied to Microsoft Teams.  Like many other software as a service programs, Teams users benefit from real-time product updates and feature rollouts. That means that the software responds to user needs and is constantly being updated with new features.  

Here are the awesome new features that have been added to your Teams app that you might not have heard about. 

1 New Meeting and Call Pop-outs – When you join a call/meeting in the desktop app, it will pop out into a secondary window instead of confining your meeting to the main Teams interface. This allows you to have a meeting on one screen and the full Teams app open on another screen etc.   It should be noted though, to use this Teams setting, you must turn it on in your general settings.

2 Book appointments with Bookings. The Bookings app inside Teams is an easy way to schedule virtual appointments. You can manage multiple calendars, as well as communications with internal and external attendees, from a single source. The virtual appointments are then held via Microsoft Teams Meetings.

3 Raise your hand in a meeting. This is especially handy when you have a large gathering and don’t want to interrupt the speaker. You let people know you have something to say with the new raise hand feature in Teams. While in a meeting, select the hand icon in your control bar. This will highlight your hand icon on your video feed to let the rest of the attendees know that you’d like to speak. Once you have been allowed to share, you just click the icon again to lower your hand. 

If your team is ready to start using the full Office 365 suite of products and you need a partner to help implement it at your office, give us a call and we can help manage the process and installation.

The post 3 Teams Updates You Might Have Missed & How To Use Or Access Them appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

We hear a whole lot about ransomware and cyber criminals these days. Andromeda helps our clients combat most data breaches with multi-tiered security solutions and employee training. But, every business is still vulnerable to incident. That is why a full proof and dependable Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity plan is an essential. Before you hit the world wide web searching for DR solutions and backup plans, take a look at these 5 critical components any professional disaster recovery plan must have.

Your disaster recovery plan should consider appropriate business continuity variables.

Disasters happen; they come in many shapes and sizes. Server crashes, accidental file deletion, physical disasters such as fire or flood and the increasingly common ransomware or malware infection are all scenarios.

You must ask two important questions yourself in regards to business continuity:

1. How much time can pass between recovery points, ie: how much data can you afford to lose; this is commonly known in Business Continuity as RPO – Recovery Point Objective
2. How much time can pass between the disaster and recovery, ie: how much time can you afford to lose; this is commonly known in Business Continuity as RTO – Recovery Time Objective

Ideally, your RPO and RTO are as low as possible.

A good Disaster Recovery Plan will consider these factors and have various options for restoring files, folders or even whole servers. On top of that, it is important that these options take into account minimalizing data loss and interruption.

Data should be stored both locally and offsite.

Many people have an easy time seeing the value in the offsite backup.  Whether that’s tape drives taken offsite daily, external USB drives treated the same, or data sent to the cloud for storage, it carries with it a feeling of great comfort knowing that “if the building burns down” the data is still safe.

What few realize is what we mean when we speak about downtime, for incidents that are not quite as catastrophic as a burning building. In those cases, it can take an unacceptable amount of time to get your hands on that offsite backup or to download an entire server from the cloud.

With a Disaster Recovery Plan option that offers backups both locally and offsite (cloud based), you are able to restore large quantities of files and entire server images quickly. Your onsite device should also have the capability to virtualize as a temporary server in the event your main server crashes.

Find a disaster recovery plan option that provides multiple restore options

When you think about restoring from a disaster, you may believe that so long as you have a version of your data somewhere, you are secure. In reality though, your recovery time objective can be greatly impacted by the different options available to you after a disaster. A disaster recovery plan with multiple options for virtualization, restoration and data access is an absolute must.

You may have heard the term “virtualization” before. Being able to virtualize your server either on a physical device at your location or in the cloud simply means that you have a temporary solution that will keep your business up and running while you resolve whatever issue corrupted your data, server or situation in the first place.

A catastrophic hardware failure can put your business down for hours, sometimes days. Rushing that process up can incur huge costs as well: rush delivery, emergency dispatch etc. In the event of a hardware failure, a virtual copy of your last backup can be spun up. Once completed, you can resume working swiftly. This quick recovery allows you to deal with hardware replacements, scheduling and budgets in an organized fashion.

A top tier solution will provide you with onsite virtualization and an option to virtualize in the cloud. Cloud virtualization is not as quick and can produce some lag time. Nonetheless, in the event your backups are stolen or disaster strikes your building (fire, flood etc.) – the ability to spin up and virtualize data from the cloud means that your business is not at a standstill.

Find out what type of support a vendor provides for disaster recovery plans.

Your company does not want to struggle to get their files restored.  You can’t wait hours and hours to restore a file you accidentally deleted.  Don’t wait for hours to hear back on the status of a data restore. Your IT partner should understand the solution they are providing and be able to work with you directly. Cut out the intermediary. Ensure your vendor monitors all the warranties, all the software support calls, and all monitoring; ensuring your backups are humming all day every day – as they should be.

Don’t trust just any business continuity or disaster recovery plan solution.

There are literally hundreds of options out there for Disaster Recovery. A quick Google search will give you pages of results.  Comparing them is mind numbing, and if we are being honest . . . who takes the time to do all that?  Your first step is to find an IT partner that you trust. Check their references. See if they have case studies to show how a disaster recovery functions with the product. Ask for a demonstration of the product. This is serious stuff and you need to trust the hands maintaining and protecting your data.

The post 5 Critical Components Any Professional Disaster Recovery Plan Must Have appeared first on Andromeda Technology Solutions.

Is your company's website built around Adobe's aging Flash Player? If so, be aware that you are officially on your own. Flash reached its EOL (End of Life) as of January 1^st of this year (2021).

From a business perspective, you don't have to worry that your Flash-dependent website will suddenly stop working, but from here on, you won't be getting any additional security updates.

Unfortunately, Adobe's Flash player is riddled with security flaws. Over the years, the company has tried gamely to patch and better secure the software but it has proved to be an impossible challenge. For every major security flaw they identify and close, at least one new one appears to take its place.

While that certainly factored into Adobe's decision to kill the Flash player, the simple truth is that the web has outgrown the technology. Back in the earliest days of the internet, Flash was well ahead of its time. It was truly groundbreaking technology that enabled webmasters to create deep, immersive experiences that simply weren't possible using other technologies of the day.

Now though, Flash has serious competition and in fact, the other options like HTML5 have handily surpassed Flash by most measures. That makes HTML5 hard to argue against. Not only is it more capable and optimized for the modern-day web, it's also more secure, which makes safer to deploy on your company's network.

The bottom line is that if you're still using Flash, it's well past time to devote resources to a redesign that will see you migrating away from it. While your site will still function, every day you leave Flash active on your network, you're putting your company at increasing risk. It's just a matter of time before a hacker stumbles across the glaring weakness on your network and takes advantage of it. You definitely don't want that.

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