IT guides for companies.
Articles written by people who’ve done this work for over 15 years, with no jargon and numbers where we can.
SIMPLIFIED
The money: what IT costs, how to budget for it, and what to ask before you sign.
Buy your equipment or take it on a subscription? The math
Every growing company reaches this point: you need ten new laptops, a capable printer, or a stable network. Do you buy them outright, with a direct hit to your cash flow, or fold them into a monthly subscription? The right answer depends on several factors. It comes down to how often they need replacing, who handles their maintenance, and how you prefer to manage the spend in your budget. Here we run the math applied to your own company, past the generic advice.
The first 30 days with a new IT provider
Signing the contract is the easy part. The first month sets the tone for the whole partnership. It’s the period when a manager sees a new provider’s standards most clearly. Here’s what to expect in the first 30 days, and what it’s reasonable to ask for, whichever partner you choose.
What to ask an IT provider before you sign.
IT service contracts look much alike at first glance, but the differences that matter show up in exactly the details few people check before signing. Over 15 years, we have seen both solid contracts and contracts clients barely managed to escape, and along the way we have gathered the questions that genuinely make the difference. Put these questions to any prospective provider, including us.
Why you pay unplanned IT costs, and how to put a stop to them
In two out of every ten companies we visit, the picture is the same: a rough IT budget, unpredictable emergency invoices, and no clear view of what the IT infrastructure actually costs over a year. This isn’t a question of negligence. It’s a question of structure. Let’s work through it, on the numbers.
OPTIMIZED
Operations: maintenance, outsourcing, and the hours that vanish unnoticed.
In-house IT, outsourced, or both?
The question comes up in every company as it grows: do we hire an IT person or work with a firm? The honest answer is that it depends on your size and on what you have to manage, and that the right choice is often a combination of the two. Let’s put the options side by side, with the strengths and limits of each.
On-premise server or cloud? How to decide, for your company
The question looks technical, but the decision really comes down to how your company works: do you keep the server in the office, where you have it under direct control, or move the data to the cloud, where you reach it from anywhere and pay a monthly fee? The right answer depends on several factors: how many people you employ, the applications you run, and the quality of your internet connection. And in most cases, the best option is neither purely on-premise nor purely cloud, but a combination of the two. Here we weigh them side by side, applied to your company rather than in the abstract.
The hour of downtime: why inefficient IT is a major drain on profit.
Most companies never put “hours lost to technology” on the balance sheet. Managers see repair invoices as a cost, but they miss the real culprit: productivity that quietly evaporates. When a system runs slow, an application freezes, or a process bogs down because of a technical fault, you don’t just lose time. You lose margin.
The real benefits of IT outsourcing, past the sales pitch.
Plenty of “top 10 benefits” lists have been written on this topic, most of them stacked with marketing terms. Because we have worked in this field for over 15 years, we took a different approach: the real benefits, as they look from the ground, including the less comfortable parts of moving over.
SECURE
Protection: backup, security, and compliance, without the alarmism.
GDPR at a small company: the IT side and the legal side
GDPR can look complex and expensive, especially right after an email that promises fines. For a small company, though, it comes down first to good organization and discipline on the IT side, not a thick stack of documents bought under pressure. We’ll split it, calmly, in two: the IT side, where we can help, and the legal side, where the right answer is a lawyer and the ANSPDCP guidance, not a blog post.
How to spot a phishing email (and prepare your team)
Phishing isn’t an exotic threat. It’s the most common way a company ends up in a security incident. What makes it distinct is that it doesn’t attack the infrastructure: it attacks the employee sitting in front of the screen. A message that looks like it comes from someone you know, pushing you to click, to send a password, or to make a payment. The good news is that almost all of these messages stop with a few simple habits. The checklist below is written to go through with your team before an incident, not after one.
NIS2 for small business: how it affects you.
NIS2 is the European cybersecurity directive that most of you have probably received at least one anxious email about. The good news: for most small companies, the panic is unwarranted. The less good news: “it doesn’t apply to me directly” is not the same as “it doesn’t reach me at all.” Let’s separate the two, calmly.
Ransomware: what to do in the first hour
A message appears on the screen demanding money, files stop opening, and the office goes quiet. What you do in the first hour matters more than everything you do over the following week, and, counterintuitively, the best moves are the calm ones. The list below is written to be read beforehand, not on the day it happens.
Two-factor authentication at your company: where to start
If you have time for a single security measure this week, turn on two-factor authentication. It’s cheap, usually free, and it cuts most of the risk for very little effort: a stolen password is no longer enough on its own to get someone into an account. At a company, the useful question isn’t “what is it,” since anyone can explain that, but “where do I start, and how do I roll it out without locking my team out.” Those are the two questions this guide answers.
“We have backups.” Good. But has anyone checked them?
In over 15 years of audits, “do you have backups?” has nearly always drawn the same answer: “yes, we do.” It’s the second question that separates the companies that are genuinely calm from the ones that only think they are: when did you last try to recover something from them? That’s usually where the silence sets in.