Don’t get me wrong, Bryley loves tech. We love what it brings us, for example:

1 Access to our collective knowledge
2 The extension of our minds 1
3 Time Travel 2 — the time it used to take to communicate with someone else has been erased
4 Collaboration tools
5 Productivity boosters
6 Twitch and Snood

But Bryley sees its function as helping a business run smoothly, reliably, continuously. And our tool to get this done is technology expertise.

Bryley’s a Managed Service Provider — Which Is What Exactly?

A Managed Service Provider (MSP) oversees a company’s computer network infrastructure. MSPs deliver ongoing support that can include the setup, installation, configuration and maintenance of the network and its assets. An MSP can augment a business’s internal IT department and provide higher-level, rarer skills that may not be available to the internal IT department. Because MSPs are proactive, bringing centralized systems management solutions, an MSP can give unmatched peace of mind, that a business’s functioning is secure. 3 The following is not comprehensive, but are some of the areas in which MSPs help.

Business Continuity and Data Recovery

For a business to survive data loss because of a data breach, natural disaster, hardware failure, corruption or human error, it has to pay attention to and invest in its networking infrastructure. Given the cost of downtime from a catastrophe 4 , riding on that data and its ability to be quickly recovered is the very business’s survival. This is where an MSP’s Business Continuity and Data Recovery (BCDR) plan comes in. BCDR is designed to give failover environments and continuous data replication to protect the data and ensure a company’s ability to get back to business as quickly as possible. It also addresses the need for secure offsite and/or cloud copies for worst-case scenarios. 5

Software Updating and Patching

MSPs provide software support and maintenance to safeguard OS’s and applications’s performance. This includes making sure the programs are patched in a timely way to thwart attackers while not breaking a business’s operations. An MSP brings a client organization patch auditing, applications, appliances and staff to run analyses and determine fitting responses. The MSP’s goal is that its client’s work carries on uninterrupted as it should.

Network Monitoring and Maintenance

Lost productivity is expensive. With symptoms like laggy performance or outages, the cause may be inefficient, compromised and/or malfunctioning networks and components. MSPs can reduce the occurrence of these kinds of problems by watching the network for slow or failing elements. MSPs can identify and fix the problem, so a business has shorter downtimes.

Data Storage

MSPs can help a business develop and implement a plan to store its data, including using the cloud. Bryley operates its own private cloud and also uses other cloud environments. Also MSPs provide systematic data migration as storage options evolve.

Cloud Computing and Back-Up

Cloud computing means more than data storage. And the more a business depends on the cloud, the more complex its IT environment becomes (more software suppliers, more connectivity, more scattered data and applications). Also because a business may be using a public, private, or hybrid cloud platform, MSPs can help a business integrate the cloud to unify its workflows, efficiently store its data, and keep that data secure (almost 80 percent of companies lose data in the cloud every year 6).

Securing Endpoints Including Internet of Things

Both Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) and the Internet of Things (IoT) add a number of vulnerable endpoints that expose a business’s infrastructure. This infrastructure, and indeed most of these new endpoints, need to be managed and secured for the business to realize benefits from these convenient solutions. 7

VPN

An MSP may offer access to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) to create an encrypted data tunnel between a business and the VPN provider securing the data in-transit.

Email and Email Training

MSPs may manage a business’s email so that the email function is physically isolated from the business’s infrastructure, giving better security. MSPs may also train employees to recognize and avoid phishing emails. And also train employees should they click a malicious link.

“Wanted to thank you for your expertise … resolved the issue so quickly and thoroughly”

That’s a recent quote from a client. Yes, Bryley’s proficiency is working with technology, but it’s the helping that matters. One-time MSP owner Ted Roller expressed it well, in trade journal, channele2e.com:

“What most people don’t realize is that MSPs often act as the glue of our communities. We talk to everyone [to] help them solve their business problems from a technology perspective. We help them be productive, work with other businesses, and communicate. We provide value (sometimes more appreciated than others. [There are] long, stressful hours and frustration … from not always being able to solve everyone’s problems. Being an MSP requires a great deal of hard work, and it is worth all that effort and more when you feel like a valuable part of your community. ” 8

People do business with professionals they know and trust. MSPs provide comprehensive, local support sensitive to the technology needs of a region’s specific industries and situation. An MSP is a strong, specialized partner to keep a business running in this age when so much of our lives and livelihoods are electronic.