A Proactive Approach to Network Consulting Services
Technology breaks – everyone knows that. But the frequency of system downtime, business disruptions, and ‘network firefighting’ can be minimized by a best-practices, proactive approach that includes 24×7 monitoring, regular system checks, documented checklists, and regular maintenance.
At The LCO Group, we understand that everyone and every business is affected by the current economic crisis. We know that IT budgets are at an all-time low, and that some initiatives are on-hold or are being re-evaluated because of cost.
But proactive network support doesn’t need to suffer during periods of tight budgets. Through the stabilization and consolidation of your networking environment, increasing productivity and higher efficiencies, and a proactive approach to network management, lower costs *can* be attained. We’ve managed to accomplish this for our existing clients – and we are confident we can do it for you.
Network Services - Proactive Approach to Lowest Cost of Ownership
At The LCO Group, we recognize that most IT support NYC firms have similar looking offerings. They talk about ‘maintenance’ or ‘monitoring’ or ‘vaulting’ or a dozen other buzzwords that their marketing folks told them to bandy-about. So we need to be different – and we are. We offer a free onsite consultation *by a certified engineer* – who is also a business analyst, registered NASD series7 holder, or Sarbanes/Hipaa CGEIT certified consultant. Our specialist engineers are business people first – and will be happy to consult with you about your existing environment, your current approach to IT management, and on ways to improve your network and support model, and your implementation of available technology.
Additionally, we offer guaranteed 100% money-back on service calls, offer very competitive package rates, and a wide variety of service plans – from small, block-hours arrangements, to desktop-only support services, to regularly scheduled support visits, to no-obligation break-fix support, and remote monitoring/help desk packages. Chances are, we have a program that will work for you – and if we don’t, let us know – and we will create one for you. That’s our #1 priority – customer satisfaction.
Our proactive network support and smart IT ‘analysis’ operates on a very simple premise – that being penny-wise and pound-foolish is not a smart way to manage IT. As an example of our approach – spending five hours fixing a three year old laptop that has seen better days is something we don’t do as an ‘automatic’ (too many of our competitors would happily do this, and count on repeat business when the unit fails again) – rather, we would examine the cost of replacement with you – and determine if a new unit is warranted.
This philosophy holds throughout our support programs : that systematic, regular maintenance of a network is required, much as an oil-change is required in a car. And that if done properly, the cost of ownership of that network, over time, will be much lower and your productivity much higher, than if it was ignored and patched with band-aids whenever a problem arises.
Hardware and Software Procurement
Procurement of technology can be a complicated task. Where can you get the best price for IT support NYC? What type of warranty do you need? Which vendors stand behind their products? Over the years, The LCO Group has dealt with many products, from a wide variety of vendors. We partner with industry leading solutions companies, and always offer at least one alternative to our clients in any product category. Need a firewall? We can offer Cisco, Sonicwall, Juniper. Need a server? HP, Dell, IBM, Apple. Never will we steer our clients into ‘preferred’ vendors that pay us a fat fee for the referral business. Any discount we get from our suppliers (due to volume purchases and preferred vendor status) are passed onto our clients. And if you want to procure hardware yourself, we will assist you, at no charge, in making sure that you get the right systems with the correct configurations.
Whether you prefer to do your own procurement or prefer to have The LCO Group LLC do that for you, we’re here to assist you.
Core Networking Support Services
At The LCO Group, our core network support services include the following:
- LAN design/redesign, implementation and maintenance
- Server Installations/Upgrades/Migrations/Maintenance
- Internet security and monitoring (firewall and web filtering)
- Implementation of Network Topology & IP Infrastructure Engineering
- Router, Switch and Firewall trouble-shooting including Cisco Products
- Network Administration
- Wireless Solutions
- Terminal Services & Remote Access (RAS) Solutions
- Backup and recovery implementations (Veritas, ARCserve & hardware solutions)
- Company-wide Anti-virus and Anti-spam Solutions (Norton Corp. Edition, McAfee Corp., Panda, Trend Mico)
- WAN connectivity (branch connectivity via T1 or VPN)
- Broadband & Telco Line Trouble-shooting (DSL, Cable Modem, ISDN,T1, Fractional T, Frame Relay)
- Technology Project Implementation
- Category 5e, 6 and 7 Data Cable Installation