In our many years of working with small and medium-sized businesses in Southern California, we have noticed that an IT crisis typically arrives at one of two different speeds. There are the slow burning issues and the disasters that happen all at once.
In today’s post, we want to look at each one, as well as what you can do to prevent them. Let’s start with the kind of IT crisis most business owners and executives worry about…
Some IT Crises Seem to Come From Nowhere
When you worry about an IT disaster, your imagination probably shifts to something like an earthquake that knocks out power to your facility, a hacker who steals information from your servers, or a massive hardware failure that leaves you and your employees scrambling to recover.
These types of events are rare, but they get lots of attention. It’s similar to the way most of us are more afraid of plane crashes then we are heart disease even though statistics tell us we should be much more worried about the latter.
The big myth (and fear) about a sudden IT disaster is that it can’t be foreseen. However, that’s hardly ever the case. While you might not be able to prepare for a specific unexpected event, you can have your technology vendor look out for known threats and have the appropriate backup plans in place.
Most IT Problems Take a Long Time to Develop
Putting aside those “sudden” IT problems for a moment, let’s turn our attention to something we see far more frequently: persistent technology problems that drag on for months until they finally become serious.
These include connectivity issues, frequent crash screens, and slow communications. They might be traced back to faulty equipment, incorrect setups, or even conflicts between different apps or hardware components. Usually, though, no one really knows because the issues aren’t investigated. Owners and employees ignore the problems, or work around them, until further inattention becomes impossible. Once that happens, what seemed like a minor inconvenience becomes a bigger crisis all at once.
In this situation, it’s almost the opposite of having an immediate IT disaster. That is, the symptoms move so slowly that they are easy to ignore. They have been costing a company (in terms of lost time and productivity) for months, but never seemed important enough to fix.
Why Almost Every IT Problem Comes From the Same Issue
Ironically, both fast and slow IT crises tend to have the same root cause: inattention. In the first case, it’s a matter of insufficient planning; in the second, it’s a lack of regular maintenance and care. Eventually, though, they end up in the same place. Either something stops working and there’s no backup, or a small problem is ignored until it becomes a big one (at which point there isn’t any backup plan).
So, if you want to avoid having expensive and disruptive IT problems in your business – whether you’re afraid of the fast ones or the slow ones – the answer is to get the coverage you need now. Contact the trained team of friendly technicians at Fantastic IT in Los Angeles today so we can help you to close any gaps in your strategy and make sure you aren’t stuck waiting for repairs when you and your team should be working.