Questions we get asked

The owner. The same consultant does the assessment, the design, the implementation and the support, so you are never explaining your setup to someone new. That is the whole point of the arrangement.

Most clients have between five and a hundred and fifty employees. Below that the work is often a single project rather than ongoing support. Above that, an organization usually needs staff on site every day, and that is a different arrangement than this one.

On site work covers Northwest Louisiana and East Texas. Remote support covers clients anywhere in the United States. If your business is outside the region and most of your needs are remote, that generally works well.

Yes, and it is common. Sometimes that means working alongside an internal person who handles day to day requests while the design, security and planning are handled here. Sometimes it means a second opinion on a specific decision.

That is fine. Assessments, office moves, server replacements and Microsoft 365 migrations are often one time engagements. There is no requirement to sign up for ongoing support afterward.

Fifteen minutes of questions about how the business runs, what is frustrating right now, and what is planned. Nothing is sold on that call. If it is worth going further, the next step is an assessment.

Ongoing support is a monthly fee based on the number of users and devices and what is included. Projects are quoted as a fixed price where the scope is clear, or hourly where it genuinely is not. Either way you get the number in writing before work starts.

Because the honest number depends on what is actually installed. A twelve person office with one server and a twelve person office with three sites and a plant floor are not comparable, and publishing a figure that applies to neither would waste your time and ours.

No. Ongoing support runs on an agreement that can be ended with reasonable notice. The intention is to keep clients because the work is good, not because leaving is difficult.

Recommendations are not driven by margin. If a piece of equipment is not needed, you will be told that, and you are free to purchase anywhere you like. If you would rather buy it yourself, that is entirely acceptable.

Typically hardware and licensing costs, major projects such as an office move or a server replacement, cabling, and work caused by something outside the agreement. Whatever the boundaries are, they are written down rather than discovered later.

It depends on the agreement. Many include a reasonable amount of on site time, with project work quoted separately. The details are agreed at the start so an invoice never contains a surprise.

Response targets are agreed as part of the support arrangement and depend on how serious the issue is. Something that stops the business is treated differently from a printer that needs attention this week. Being an independent consultancy, the practical answer is that most issues get a response within the hour during business hours.

Standard support is during business hours. Arrangements for after hours coverage can be made where the business needs it, and disruptive work such as server replacements and cutovers is scheduled out of hours as a matter of course.

By phone or email, whichever is quicker for you. Requests are tracked so nothing gets quietly dropped, and what was done is recorded against the machine or system involved.

Most of them, yes. A remote session usually gets to the actual problem faster than describing it over the phone. Anything physical, and anything that has proven hard to diagnose remotely, gets a visit.

Yes. Remote workers are supported the same way as anyone in the office, provided the remote access has been set up properly. If it has not, that is usually one of the first things worth fixing.

Any arrangement includes how to reach support urgently and what happens during planned absences. It is a fair question to ask of a small provider, and you should get a specific answer rather than a reassuring one.

By restoring from them. A backup that has never been restored is an assumption. Test restores are performed and recorded, including a full machine restore at least once, so the recovery time is a measured number rather than a hope.

Not in the way most people assume. Microsoft protects its own infrastructure and provides limited retention windows for deleted items. It does not protect you from a file deleted and emptied months ago, or from a compromised account deleting mail deliberately. A separate backup covers that gap.

Multifactor authentication on email and remote access. Password reuse is how a very large share of small business compromises begin, and multifactor authentication stops most of them regardless of what the password was.

Because targeting is automated and mostly indiscriminate. Attacks scan for anything reachable and unpatched, and phishing goes out in bulk. Being small does not make a business less visible, it usually just means fewer defenses.

Yes, and that questionnaire is a useful starting point. The questions usually cover multifactor authentication, backups, patching, endpoint protection and access controls. The work gets done and the answers get documented at the same time.

The technical controls behind most frameworks are similar: access control, multifactor authentication, encryption, backups, logging and documented procedures. That work can be done and evidenced. Formal certification or a legal opinion on whether you comply is a matter for an auditor or an attorney.

The response is contain, assess, recover, in that order: isolate affected systems, establish what was reached, then restore from a backup copy the attacker could not touch. Which is why at least one backup copy is always kept out of reach of the network it protects.

Warranty expiry and operating system support dates usually drive it more than performance. Running out of warranty means a hardware failure becomes a scramble, and running an operating system past its support date means no more security updates. Both are knowable years ahead, which is why they belong in a plan.

It depends on the software, the internet connection and the numbers over several years rather than the purchase price. Some line of business applications run poorly outside a local server, and some cloud arrangements cost more over five years than the hardware would have. Both options get costed honestly.

Six to eight weeks makes a move straightforward. The internet circuit at the new address is almost always the longest lead time and can take weeks, so ordering it early is the single most useful thing you can do.

Yes, and coordinating with them is a normal part of the work. Their supported configuration comes first, and dealing with them directly means your staff do not spend an afternoon on hold to relay technical answers.

An assessment first, so there is a documented picture of the environment before anything changes. Then administrative access and account ownership are transferred, documentation is rebuilt where it does not exist, and the outstanding issues are worked through in priority order. Most of it is invisible to your staff.

It is common and it is fixable. Your domain names, licenses, accounts and equipment belong to you, and ownership can be established and transferred. Where documentation does not exist, an assessment rebuilds it. It is worth checking now rather than during a disagreement.