Here are five questions about managed services disaster recovery and business continuity processes to get you started:

1. What failover measures are in place?
Don’t just think about hardware or systems – extend it to entire facilities. You want to know exactly what it will take for your organization to lose access to hosted systems.

2. Where are the facilities located?
Yes, plural. Ask how many datacenters your prospective partner has and where they are. Look for local physical and stability risks, especially for international locations.

3. How is information backed up and restored?
Your prospective managed infrastructure services partner should leave you with an intimate familiarity with its backup and recovery pro cedures – and the underlying systems involved. When disaster hits, you need to know what will happen next.

4. What is the security around the disaster recovery process?
Disruption necessarily involves security risks. Ask what measures are taken to safeguard information during both backup and recovery to ensure that you are not exposed to further risk.

5. How is regulatory compliance handled?
Engage your internal or external auditors, if necessary, to ensure that your prospective partner won’t impede our own progress toward compliance or require additional controls around your managed services relationship.

To get you started, here are five questions you should ask any prospective managed infrastructure services partner:

1. How secure is your facility?
Look for specifics around building, room and system access control and vulnerabilities. The facility should be virtually impenetrable. Also, ask if you can tour it (and how much you’ll actually be allowed to see).

2. What are the clients like?
The partner should have clients that resemble you, particularly in terms of size, industry and compliance profile. You want to know if the managed services provider is already handling security and compliance requirements commensurate with yours.

3. What data security measures are in place?
Again, demand details. Ask tough questions, about data in use and data at rest, and try to poke holes in the managed services provider’s security framework. After all, somebody is out there trying to do the same thing … and not merely in conversation.

4. What is the provider’s security track record?
Find out about prior attempted and successful breaches, as well as the outcomes. Client confidentiality policies may limit some of the detail that you can be given, but you want to know what can happen and how your prospective partner will handle it.

5. What remedies are available to you in the event of a breach?
If the unthinkable occurs, even if the possibility is remote, you need to know your company’s options. Make sure you understand all the remedies available to you in a wide range of scenarios.

In addition to streamlining your IT operation and organization, the use of a managed infrastructure service provider could simplify your D/R environment, bringing with it a reduction in costs and freeing up your IT budget for deployment to higher-impact IT initiatives. Move to a managed services approach to your infrastructure, and the benefits actually extend beyond the traditional TCO/ROI case.

Consider MTM’s Aware360v2 managed infrastructure, for example. Of course, we have a rigorous, reliable and tested D/R program in place – which is something you should look for when going through your due diligence on a potential partner in this space. The advantage, however, is that we apply it to all our clients, which provides an economy of scale that simply isn’t attainable for most individual companies. As a result, we’re able to keep the cost of operation contained. An in-house approach to enterprise-wide D/R is naturally more costly, both in terms of direct expense and consumption of IT department resources.

Disaster recovery doesn’t have to be difficult. Move to a managed services environment, and it’s part of the solution you engage. Focus on your business, and work with MTM to manage your infrastructure: D/R is part of the package.

While service-level agreements (SLAs) provide procedures and remedies for downtime, performance degradation and other potential problems, they are inherently retrospective: SLAs talk about how a problem can be fixed. When choosing a managed services provider, you should take a look at the measures in place that will keep problems from arising.

Evaluate your managed services provider options based on your business objectives. Consider whether you will be using it to host systems or applications that are mission-critical, for example, and use that to determine your requirements … which in turn should guide the equipment and process decisions you make. Review the provider’s plans, equipment and procedures to ensure that they are significantly robust to prevent downtime – and facilitate a swift resolution when it occurs.

Essentially, conduct your due diligence from the perspective of prevention, not post-event remediation.

As you review the managed infrastructure offering, align what you see with your business processes. Consider when you experience spikes in utilization – or simply in business activity. Think about your periods of peak business activity (and when your slower seasons are), and use this information to determine your specific managed infrastructure needs.

With MTM Aware360v2, you’ll be able to architect a solution that addresses your unique operating environment, and you’ll learn about the environment itself, in order to be confident in the infrastructure you’re using to power your business. In the end, the decision you’ll make about using a managed infrastructure will provide better results going forward.

When you use a managed services provider, you’re putting the future of your business into your partner’s hands. Make sure those hands are ready to protect your interests. Thinking through prevention rather than penalties is a smarter way to go.

If you’re thinking about moving to a managed infrastructure, which can come with many advantages, think about the IT resources that your company consumes, as well as how heavily you want to commit to operating and maintaining your own infrastructure. Variable system demand and a desire to focus on your core business while maintaining a lean IT department usually indicate that a managed services approach to your IT infrastructure is prudent.

Businesses characterized by the following conditions tend to be best fits for managed infrastructures:

• System usage sustains periodic, expected spikes (e.g., from seasonal activity), making flexible access to resources preferable to maintaining dark equipment for most of the year
• You expect to grow into your infrastructure over time – and don’t want to start paying for the future now
• Your company is in an early stage or startup period, and it would make more sense to focus on your core business model than in building an IT organization
• The business is small and is unlikely to become large – making an in-house IT presence less cost effective than a managed infrastructure

Of course, there are other situations in which a company would want to outsource some or all of its infrastructure. Strategic drivers around staff size and focus as well as the cost of local talent can make a managed services model more effective.

Instead of making a quick decision regarding whether to use managed services, commit the time required by the gravity of the issue. Contact MTM’s Managed Services team, and we’ll help you identify the most effective approach to delivering technology to your business users and clients.

You know the drill: the CFO needs to keep costs contained. Meanwhile, the IT department always seems like it’s running too lean. Demands are always increasing, especially as new systems are introduced to increase business efficiency. Every new opportunity to streamline operations across the company seems to come with an incremental burden on the infrastructure. So, what happens to the infrastructure team?

To alleviate the pressure on your staff, you’ll need to reach out to the CFO to understand the cost and efficiency implications of every new system implementation and business decision for your IT infrastructure. The fact that a new solution makes things easier for the business users doesn’t necessarily mean it has the same effect in your department. Managed infrastructure services can take the guesswork out of infrastructure cost and management, making budgets more accurate and meaningful and reducing the number of surprises that will spring up throughout the year. Outsource even part of your IT infrastructure to a service such as MTM’s Aware360v2, and you can improve not only IT management but financial management.

Predictability: The odds of having to add equipment or headcount based on business changes drop substantially with a managed infrastructure services provider. You have a set expense every month, and you know exactly what you are getting.

Cost: It’s often less expensive to use a managed infrastructure, because resources are pooled and allocated dynamically. This means that you have access to much more than you would in your own datacenter, where you only have access to the equipment you have purchased.

Reliability: Service level agreements, similar to those governing IT performance within your company, provide a certain level of protection for IT risk, outages and other situations that could impair performance. Further, disaster/recovery and business continuity plans are easier to build and execute, given the infrastructure already in place with managed service providers such as MTM.

Security: Not only is security robust, at least commensurate with what you have in place internally, but it’s also less expensive, again because of economies of scale. As a result, your data and systems are protected – at a fraction of the cost your company would incur on its own.

Talk to the CFO about the business decision to use a managed infrastructure service. Emphasize the cost savings and the access to solutions that would be more expensive if you implemented them internally. Further, explain how the efficiencies and cost predictability facilitate financial and headcount management. This is a language your CFO will understand.

Managed infrastructure services can take the guesswork out of your infrastructure, making it easier for you to stay within your budget – and even find operational efficiencies that yield cost savings. Instead of needing to manage to changing capacity, which can be influenced by everything from hiring to mergers and acquisitions, you can use MTM Aware360v2 managed infrastructure service to gain the flexibility you need to manage datacenter capacity in a business environment that changes constantly … and often contrary to forecasts.

With Aware360v2, you scope out your environment and understand the financial implications immediately. The environment, given the economies of scale involved, can be adjusted easily to address your changing needs, with capacity and other resources available for dynamic reallocation, especially when your business encounters the unexpected. When transformational change occurs, you can revisit your requirements with the Aware360v2 team to determine any changes that are necessary, without having to engage internal resources who are already stretched thin.

Much of an IT professional’s career is spent either preparing for or coping with the unexpected. Use MTM’s managed infrastructure services to mitigate these risks, and spend more of your time on the activities that will turn IT into a competitive advantage for your company.

If you’re looking to start a new company and are wary of investing directly in your own IT infrastructure, our Aware360v2 managed infrastructure is the solution you need to get started fast and at minimal cost.

In the early days of any business, you need to make the commitment to an IT infrastructure, and you have to be judicious with your budget. The talent and equipment necessary to implement a robust IT infrastructure is costly, and you bear the sole burden (and risk) of management. Further, you’ll find that much of your investment will go unused until you grow into it, meaning that you’re forced to overspend at a time when you need to conserve every dollar available to you.

Aware360v2, MTM’s managed infrastructure solution, provides exactly the solution you need to launch your IT presence at as low a cost as possible and with minimal risk. Our environment already exists – we just need to ramp you up. Also, because we provide services to a large number of clients, you can take advantage of our economies of scale. Essentially, you can secure exactly the capacity and resources you need – without having to spend now for what you may not need for months or years to come.

Perhaps the greatest advantage of MTM’s managed infrastructure solution, though, is speed. We can get you started in much less time than it would take you to identify and hire the key talent you need, design your infrastructure, purchase equipment and implement your environment.

Time, cost and risk – it all comes together in your new business. Work with MTM and Aware360v2, and you get all the benefits of a powerful IT presence while mitigating risk, conserving budget and accelerating the entire process.

To combat this risk, many IT departments invest heavily in their infrastructures. Some even over-invest. As a result, there’s an operational imbalance that costs precious IT resources … and the enterprise still isn’t completely protected from serious external threats. A managed infrastructure can provide the layer of protection you need to ensure that a technical problem doesn’t tarnish your reputation in the marketplace.

MTM’s Aware360v2 infrastructure is designed, quite simply to run. Our environment serves the sole purpose of ensuring that the systems you need are available when you need them. On its face, this sounds incredibly simple, yet the underpinnings are not, as every IT infrastructure manager knows. Attaining a straightforward goal can often be difficult. With Aware360v2, we assume the challenges of running a smooth datacenter for you, using economies of scale to reduce operating costs and increase the strength of our environment to levels that an individual company may not be able to attain.

Like the goal, the outcome is pretty simple: you’ll be able to rely on your infrastructure. It will be there when you need it. And, your customers will be able to rely on it, too.

Your reputation is put at risk every day – that’s just the nature of operating in an increasingly complex global business environment. You can control one of the threats, however. Engage MTM to manage your infrastructure for you, and you can focus on the other risks your business faces, without having to worry about a server outage damaging your reputation.

1. Aggressive hiring
If your company is growing aggressively, you may be adding employees faster than your support organization can adapt to the spike in its internal client base. Rather than try to chase demand with added capacity, which always puts you a step behind your organization’s needs, work with MTM Technologies to implement an outsourced solution that can grow as your company does – not behind it.

2. A wave of acquisitions
Nothing is quite so disruptive as a merger or an acquisition – except a series of them in rapid succession! Instead of integrating one IT department after another, use a managed infrastructure to streamline your operation, and integrate specific systems into it rather then run the entire “people, processes and technology” spectrum. Not only will you save time and reduce post-merger integration costs, but you’ll also alleviate pressure on employees across your company during a period of increased workloads and business uncertainty.

3. Too small to scale
Even the largest companies start out as small ones, and the odds of getting big are directly related to how you manage your expenses while you’re small. If you are overspending on your servers and storage right now – i.e., you’ll be waiting to grow into your available capacity – it may be prudent to work with MTM to handle your infrastructure needs. In an on-demand environment, you won’t have to pay for technology that you may not even need until it’s obsolete.

4. Big data, small business
Companies that operate in a high-transaction environment or otherwise generate data disproportionate with their size may find themselves with more infrastructure than they can handle at existing staffing levels. When this happens, it’s time to look to the outside. MTM’s Aware360v2 managed services solution provides both the equipment and team necessary to keep your business running, but at a lower cost because of the economies of scale we’re able to attain.

5. D/R is a stack of tapes on top of the server
If you are unable to develop a sufficiently secure disaster recovery plan because of your target IT department size or budget, you are putting your business at risk. One disaster event – something as small as a fire that is contained in your offices – could put you out of business, especially if you do, in fact, keep your data backups on site. Our managed infrastructure services can help you protect your business while operating it more efficiently.