Overview

Businesses with 100 to 250 network users have traditionally been an under-served segment of the IT outsourcing market. The cost structures and service delivery models of large third-party support organizations make them too expensive for most mid-size businesses, who typically have small IT budgets with which to support IT networks whose complexity and sophistication are comparable to the information systems of larger enterprises. Decision Consultants' service delivery model, which takes full advantage of remote support, virtual office infrastructure and proactive network monitoring, dramatically reduces IT support costs while offering enterprise-level service from certified, world-class experts in a broad range of technologies.

Decision Consultants' co-sourcing services allow your business to find the right balance between in-house and outside support by leveraging the capability of your in-house IT staff with the in-depth expertise of Decision Consultants' engineers. By delivering effective support when you need it, providing specialists for critical applications, minimizing travel costs through remote support, offering unique services such as customized, automated server monitoring, and charging only for the services you use, Decision Consultants gives you an affordable way to maximize the business value of your network.

Why Decision Consultants Makes Sense for Mid-size Businesses

Decision Consultants' staff of certified IT professionals have extensive experience with enterprise networks, allowing mid-size businesses to achieve world-class IT support without having to maintain large internal IT organizations or absorb the high cost of outsourcing network support to large national service organizations.

Working with Decision Consultants allows your mid-size business to:

Avoid Turning IT Management Into Crisis Management
Companies with 100 to 250 network clients often have sophisticated, enterprise-class IT infrastructures, but rarely have internal IT staffs with the depth and breadth of technical expertise to provide all the IT support that complex networks require. Internal resources are often overworked and budgetary realities do not permit hiring additional full-time IT staff.

These environments can be subject to higher than average employee turnover, which often leads to situations where replacement support staff must focus on keeping the network running rather than enhancing it. Lacking in knowledge of the history, design, implementation, and architecture of the network, and with little time available between crises, new support staff are unlikely to be able to plan and implement effective network upgrades or migrate the system to keep up with changing business requirements.

Let Senior Management Focus on Business, Not Network Hassles
Many mid-size businesses are aggressively moving to outsourced support models for information technology because building up large internal IT staffs seldom pays off with strategic business advantages. Attempting to handle all IT service issues in-house can bog down senior management with the details of IT problems, yielding poor returns for time invested by such top talent.

Companies need reliable, feature-rich, secure, and fault-tolerant IT environments to support their mission critical applications, but they recognize that it makes little business sense to own and build such systems themselves or to manage large internal staffs of IT personnel. Smart outsourcing or co-sourcing allows companies to concentrate their internal resources on areas that will bring them the greatest strategic and competitive advantages in the markets they serve.

Migrate Quickly to the Best Network Technology
Tough economic times have caused many IT environments to become woefully out of date as a result of IT budgets being slashed in the interest of survival. The starvation diets forced upon many business networks has created a burden of outdated information systems. This problem becomes apparent when the demand for new applications and customer-centered information solutions can’t be easily adapted to legacy systems.

Increasingly, companies are being challenged by upstart competitors who are not saddled with outdated environments and can quickly introduce state-of-the-art, customer-friendly applications such as web-based eCommerce, vender extranets, customer portals, and integrated supply chain management. Often such major initiatives can't be carried out solely with existing resources. Adding to full-time head count seldom makes long-term economic sense for project-specific work, and companies typically don’t have the time to bring resources up to speed for business-critical projects. In these circumstances, it can be very cost effective to engaged outsourced resources that can solve problems immediately.

Unique Advantages of Working with Decision Consultants

As a Microsoft Gold-certified consulting firm, Decision Consultants is an acknowledged expert at the fundamental system software and productivity applications used by most small and medium-size companies. As a Cisco-certified partner with one of the largest groups of CCIE accredited network technology engineers in the country, Decision Consultants also offers expertise for an ever more complex array of network technologies including PIX and ASA firewalls, switches, routers, VoIP options, and wireless networking. Furthermore, Decision Consultants' CISSP-certified security experts, CISM-certified security professionals, CISA-authorized security audit specialists and GIAC-authorized security professionals offer a company-wide view of network security.

The scope and depth of Decision Consultants' engineering staff offer a unique set of benefits to companies wishing to maximize the business value of their IT network within a reasonable budget. These benefits include:

Best Practices
Decision Consultants' team of Microsoft and Cisco qualified consultants average longer than a decade of real-world industry background, at the front lines of network support, performing a wide range of IT tasks for a large mix of clients. Each Decision Consultants support professional shares a refined collection of best practices which are incorporated into company-wide best practices standards that Decision Consultants instills in its consulting team. This ensures that you get not only world-class IT skills, but also a support engineer with proven methods for using computer knowledge to repair real-world network problems efficiently. Find out more about Decision Consultants' best practices for network consulting.

Value Pricing
Decision Consultants' pricing policy is to charge for online service and on-site visits by the minute. Consequently, you owe only for delivered support. Decision Consultants does not impose a higher rate for urgent service, Also, many support organizations demand large minimum payments. Decision Consultants' small billing granularity eliminates huge invoices for fast solutions so you will be less tempted to permit less critical problems to stay unaddressed until they grow into big problems. Find out more about Decision Consultants' value pricing for IT outsourcing.

Full Documentation of IT Services
Decision Consultants has created a sophisticated service reporting system that records and formats detailed documentation for all delivered support activities. Unlike some independent consultants or small service firms who provide scant documentation or details of tasks performed, every service delivered by Decision Consultants is accompanied by full documentation. Every Decision Consultants staff member has access to the service documentation sent by each staff member to every customer. The practice of documenting and archiving support records allows more efficient support and avoids a variety of typical misfortunes such as when a service client is effectively held captive to a consultant who won’t let go of the keys to the kingdom. Find out more about Decision Consultants' documentation of IT outsourcing services.

Knowledge Transfer
Decision Consultants practices information transfer from Decision Consultants' consultants to customers. By educating customers to handle technical issues that are within their comfort zone, Decision Consultants can focus on delivering hard-to-find skills where Decision Consultants has little competition. Small businesses who work with trusted freelance service providers or who employ internal IT staffs benefit when Decision Consultants transfers information about new technology and proven processes to make their networks more robust, protected, and productive. Find out more about Decision Consultants' knowledge transfer services.

Service Delivery Options Available for Mid-size Businesses

To suit the needs and budgets of mid-size businesses, Decision Consultants offers a variety of options for delivering support, troubleshooting and consulting services.

Security Services
Decision Consultants offers a wide range of network security services to help businesses to identify and eliminate security vulnerabilities, defend against attacks, and recover from successful penetrations. Decision Consultants can provide remote and on-premise security consulting and also has developed economical fixed-cost security evaluation packages to complement Decision Consultants' regular by-the-minute billing. Decision Consultants' security assessment packages provide businesses with an economical way to comply with security standards mandated by state regulators or by customers.

Hosting Services
Decision Consultants' application hosting services such as Hosting Services for Microsoft Exchange offer a secure, affordable, and hassle-free alternative for managing mission-critical applications by combining the dependability of a world-class data center with the expertise of Decision Consultants' Microsoft Gold-certified support team. Decision Consultants' Virtual Data Center Hosting service gives midsize businesses a cost-effective option for hosting a variety of software platforms and key applications in a secure, fault-tolerant data center on a high-performance virtual host configured and maintained by Decision Consultants' network support experts.

Virtualization Expertise
Decision Consultants can provide expert consulting to help midsize businesses efficiently deploy advanced virtual server platforms in order to save money, improve reliability, and streamline disaster recovery. Decision Consultants offers and VMware virtual server help, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V support, and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 expertise. Decision Consultants' engineers can help midsize businesses design networks that get the full benefit of virtualization, implement virtual servers to enhance network performance, dependability, and manageability while cutting expenses, create and validate business continuity procedures that reduce downtime in the event of a catastrophic network failure, and provide continuing consulting and support for virtualized environments.

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager-based Network Support Packages
Decision Consultants has developed special Network Support Packages based on the automated problem detection and analysis capabilities of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, a powerful network management platform that monitors the reliability, throughput, and security of your network servers and alerts you to problems before they can impact your productivity. Decision Consultants' Network Support Packages also include network evaluation, security assessment, Help Desk support, and the design of secure data links between your system and Decision Consultants’ support engineers. Find out more about Decision Consultants' special Network Support Packages for cost-effective IT support outsourcing.

How To Contact Decision Consultants

For more information about Decision Consultants' Network Support Packages, call (866) 666-7731 or send email to information@dcicorporation.com