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Al Kendi Computer Systems Blog

Al Kendi Computer Systems has been serving the Dubai area since 2011, providing IT Support such as technical helpdesk support, computer support, and consulting to small and medium-sized businesses.

Better IT Strategy Leads to Better Business

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Business technology continues to grow in importance for the small and medium-sized business, especially as many prepare for 2019. Where enterprise-level companies have long been using technology to bring people together and drive overall productivity, many SMBs are new to these opportunities. The availability of cloud resources, coupled with shifts in security, mobility, and other core technologies, makes it important for every organization, no matter what size, to have a comprehensive technology strategy.

Before we go into the actual strategic shifts, providing some background information can get you to understand just how important it is to have a plan in place. Say you want to enhance your business’ mobility. Accomplishing this touches several parts of the company’s IT infrastructure.

  • First, mobile devices have to be able to connect to your in-house network, necessitating a wireless platform.
  • Secondly, you need databases that are accessible from remote worksites, which means that you have to have some form of hosted solution.
  • Lastly, you need a way to securely transmit data from one location to another, often made possible through the use of a virtual private network.

This one project could cost your company a lot in both time and resources. If you consider just how much technology your company relies on - and which will need to be upgraded/purchased in efforts to improve your business - having a strategy that covers the procurement, deployment, management, and support of any technology you’ll utilize is a must.

What is an IT Strategy?

A business’ technology strategy outlines its goals, producing a roadmap of how to get there without stymieing growth or mortgaging the rest of the company’s health. The idea behind adding technology into your business’ toolbox is to boost revenue. Technology, however, isn’t one of those things that you can simply throw money at and expect results.

Even if it was, taking that frame of mind would likely result in cost overruns and a woeful ROI. For profitibily’s sake, your business’ IT strategy has to cover certain variables.

One is to estimate the amount of capital that it will take to improve your IT, analyzing both upfront and recurring costs. Another is to estimate what it will cost in terms of time and resources to acquire, manage, and support your infrastructure, applications, IT-related services, innovation, and technology deployment.

If you aren’t specific in terms of the costs and resources needed to accomplish your goals, chances are your technology investments may look prohibitive to running a secure and effective business.

Developing a Strong IT Strategy

You may be able to do some part of strategizing for what could be simple improvements, but if there are a lot of moving parts (like the scenario above), you will absolutely want to reach out to a professional IT technician before your implement any changes for the new year..

If you don’t have in-house IT experts, you can call in an IT services provider in Dubai like Al Kendi Computer Systems for assistance.

Not only do we have contacts that can put you with some of today’s best technology and security vendors, we also know how these systems work--from the design phase all the way through to support--putting us in a great position to help you maximize the effectiveness of your IT capital.

After completing an assessment and selecting what project(s) you want to undertake, one suggestion is to go ahead and draft vision and mission statements. A vision statement provides a portrait of what your business’ future looks like with the proposed changes.

The mission statement, however, is a more pragmatic statement (or series of statements) that outline what exactly needs to be done and how it will be accomplished. In essence, it is a business plan for your business’ technology (in this case, for the span of 2019). Since it can be easy to look at IT improvements as vanity projects rather than ones that return enhanced profitability, you will often have to take a step back and look at the cost and potential benefits of each proposed shift to ensure that a particular project is right for your business.

IT Strategy = Revenue

After getting a professional’s opinion, and doing the financials, you are now ready to improve your business’ informations systems. By now it has been ascertained what the problem is, how much capital is available (both up front and over time), and who is running point on the project.. Your IT strategy has come into view and now all that is left to implement it for 2019, right?

In a perfect world, yes… but this is not one of those. In the real world, IT projects can have a mind of their own and you should plan for that.

Businesses can’t be cavalier with their budget simply because there is a cool new piece of technology on the market. A business owner who is not flexible with their expectations of an IT project will often have some sideways questions about it. Not everyone takes to certain software, not all legacy systems integrate with new server technology, but when the pieces fit together properly, your business will thrive.

At Al Kendi Computer Systems, we help businesses just like yours make the right decisions about their business technology. If you want to build a better business through the deployment of today’s most innovative IT call us today at 04 2964454

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Investigating the Value of Managed IT Services

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Managed IT services Dubai

Can present a lot of benefits for small businesses. Since not many smaller businesses can afford to staff expert IT technicians, managed IT services are an attractive alternative that allows an organization to get the IT support and management they need to keep their business running efficiently. Today, we’ll go over all the benefits a managed service provider can present a small business,and just how a MSP delivers significant returns on your IT support investments.

The first thing that should be mentioned is that, with all the threats out there, every business needs dedicated IT management. Many small businesses have tried to keep their crucial IT working properly through what is known as break/fix. The basic strategy of this is: when a part of your company’s IT infrastructure breaks, you get it fixed. This strategy has some merits for companies that don’t necessarily use enterprise-level, or complicated, IT solutions; but, no matter what their position is, when they rely on the break/fix strategy, downtime is going to end up being an issue. The average small business owner may not even consider this costly as much of the technology management services that you would call when your IT breaks (or starts acting up) is done onsite and only takes a short time to fix. However, it typically costs a pretty penny, and there is no telling if the problem will cause others, or come back again frequently.

The problem with this is that every minute that your IT is down, your organizational profitability is hindered. Say you run a small retail store and your point of sale computer goes down. You make the call to the computer repair company and they come within an hour and your computer is up and running in two. That’s two whole hours where you are scrambling around trying to figure out how to service your customers’ needs without the use of your most important computing system. If you are lucky, you will be able to keep your business open during this time, but often you simply cannot as many businesses not only have their register through their POS system, they also have their inventory system through it. When dealing with IT downtime your service will inevitably be hindered, and you may actually lose repeat customers because of the outage as word of mouth carries further than ever before as a result of social media.

Managed IT Services Dubai

With Managed IT services, you’ll never have to shut your business down or deal with long stretches of downtime. This is because it is handled much differently. With an MSP looking after your business’ computers and computing network, you will know in advance if one of your computers is going to fail. Al Kendi Computer Systems’s brand of IT services proactively monitors your computers and network; and, using state-of-the-art software, is able to leverage its built-in and extremely innovative automation options to your advantage, effectively reducing your IT costs by keeping your systems up and running efficiently. The fact is that most of the problems the modern PC has can be remedied with dedicated monitoring and management.

It’s easy to see how our proactive monitoring service can present value. Your return is properly functioning technology, boosting profitability, and effectively cutting your IT support costs; but that is just the beginning. An MSP provides several other services that are designed to deliver value. One such service is our Backup and Disaster Recovery service. You may be thinking, “how could backup produce a significant return?” Not only is it part of the value-based approach, it also protects your business from data loss, a major problem for any business that depends on its data.

Data loss doesn’t just happen when a disaster hits your business, it can happen any day in a multitude of different ways. In fact, most data loss is a result of employee negligence. Many businesses also have to deal with strategic hacking and social engineering attempts that put data at risk. A majority of small businesses that deal with an event where they lose large portions of their data are out of business within the next fiscal year. This scenario is especially problematic when the data that is lost belongs to vendors and customers, since, for a small business, reputation damage is hard to rebound from.

MSP-offered backup and recovery typically comes in the form of a network attached storage device that is expanded with the use of cloud computing. All the data you need will be backed up initially. After your data is redundantly stored in multiple places, snapshots of the changes made to your organization’s data will be taken periodically to ensure that, if you are forced to restore, that you aren’t losing much data. Data snapshots can be completed as little as every 15 minutes, preserving your data and immediately boosting the potential effectiveness of your business’ continuity strategy.

The value doesn’t stop there. MSPs typically also offer thorough network security practices to ensure that your network is protected. Outside of the comprehensive management you get with network and endpoint monitoring, you also will be outfitted with security solutions designed to ensure that if they don’t have access to the network and infrastructure, that they don’t get in, period. This is where the years of experience managing and maintaining business networks comes in. By knowing what to look for, and knowing where to strengthen security measures, your organization will deal with less downtime, essentially presenting you further opportunities for profitability.

Most MSPs also offer a vendor management service that is designed to keep clients from wasting time trying to juggle all their vendors. By handling your vendor relationships we are able to be a single point of contact for anything that you could need, saving you a lot of time. You can then focus on your business and not your vendors, which are relationships that tend to take up a lot of time. Moreover, with vendor management, you will get the solutions, services, and products you need at a price that works for you.

Additionally, most MSPs will also offer 24/7/365 help desk, so that if your organization does have problems, that it can get in touch with a remotely-connected technician immediately. Moreover, many MSPs also provide training resources that delivers information about industry best practices designed to keep security top of mind. If your staff is repelling threats instead of accepting them, it will go a long way toward securing your organization’s IT infrastructure and network.

Calculating Value of Managed IT Service in Dubai

There is a lot a value in rolling out managed IT services Dubai but how valuable is it to you? Well there is no simple algorithm for this particular service. You could produce ROI totals for every service that your MSP provides for you then add them up, but that algorithm would get pretty long. Between the monitoring and maintenance, the network security, the vendor management, the backup and recovery, the around the clock support, the consultation, and the onsite support, you’re looking at a pretty significant amount of value from your monthly service agreement.

While it is hard to put a ROI on managed IT service delivery, people do try. There are managed IT Service in Dubai ROI calculators all over the web. One of the easiest ways to do this is to estimate the revenue you generate by uptime and successful IT outcomes and compare it by the cost you pay for managed services. That will give you a rough idea about the value of your managed IT service.

Typically, the variable that most companies focus on when partnering with a managed services provider is downtime. As stated above, downtime is a business killer. Our strategy to deploying managed services is pretty simple: stop downtime from costing our clients’ money and marginalizing their success… and this strategy works! It takes committed and knowledgeable technicians, today’s best technology solutions, and clients that aren’t afraid to trust that we can deliver a valuable resource.

If yours is one such company, contact the IT professionals at Al Kendi Computer Systems today at 971-4-2964454.

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Is Data a Commodity? Maybe Not, but It Is an Asset

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The late American author Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.” Written in the 20th century, it has been put in practice by 21st century businesses. As the Internet has grown, the amount of companies expanded, and the amount of data that those companies collect has grown exponentially, especially now that there is a market for such data.

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Why (and How) SMBs Should Strategically Adopt Technology

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There is no question that a small business can benefit from technology, as has been proven time and time again. However, an issue can arise if a business bites off more than it can chew, so to speak, and ultimately creates a spike in costs. A responsible business owner will resist this temptation and prioritize the solutions they need over the ones they want - building profitability and generating capital needed to make other improvements.

In this blog, we’ll examine some of the implementations that can deliver a good return on investment to a small business.

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Is Your Cloud Solution Actually a Money Pit?

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The cloud has proven to be an extremely useful tool for the modern business. Not only does it provide anywhere-anytime access to applications, processing, storage, et al; it also delivers those products as a service, allowing you to budget for recurring costs rather than major upfront ones. This provides your organization with functional, supported, and secure computing environments that eliminate a lot of the support costs that traditional computing environments require. It sounds like a perfect scenario for small and large businesses alike, but things aren’t always what they seem, as a lot of cloud users have found that they have incurred several hidden costs by using cloud platforms. Today, we take a look at these hidden costs.

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How to Avoid Becoming the Next Data Security Cautionary Tale

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Data security isn’t a matter to be taken lightly, as too many businesses have found out the hard way. Unfortunately, there are far too many simple ways to correct common security issues - enough that it’s foolish not to do so. We’ll review a few ways to fix security issues, after discussing one of, if not the, most egregious security failings in modern history.

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When it Comes to Security, Two Factors are Better Than One

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The password isn’t nearly as secure as it used to be. Hackers have begun to take advantage of extremely powerful solutions designed to brute force their way into accounts by using software to rapidly guessing thousands of passwords per second, making it extraordinarily difficult to prepare yourself for them.

What’s the best way to guarantee that passwords aren’t going to be the downfall of your company? A great start is by taking a close look at password best practices and two-factor authentication.

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4 Ways a Managed Service Provider Can Help Your Business

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How much does your business rely on technology to keep your organization running forward? As business technology becomes more complex, it’s becoming increasingly popular for organizations to have their own internal IT departments to manage and maintain it. Yet, small businesses don’t often have the necessary funds for such a feat. How can your company afford quality IT service? You can start by pursuing managed IT solutions from a managed service provider.

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Knowing, and Planning For, Your Organization’s Compliance Burden

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Despite what detractors say, regulations are in place for good reason. They typically protect individuals from organizational malfeasance. Many of these regulations are actual laws passed by a governing body and cover the entire spectrum of the issue, not just the data involved. The ones that have data protection regulations written into them mostly deal with the handling and protection of sensitive information. For organizations that work in industries covered by these regulations there are very visible costs that go into compliance. Today, we look at the costs incurred by these organizations as a result of these regulations, and how to ascertain how they affect your business.

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A Look at Business Computing Costs: Cloud vs. On Premise

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Profitability is less the measure of being able to turn a profit, and more the measure of how much profit you can make. For the successful small business, the integration of technology can dictate what kind of annual margins you are looking at. For the new company, however, it can be something even more critical: the difference between setting a course for success, or wallowing in failure. Today we analyze the cost difference between hosting your IT in-house, or choosing to host it in the cloud.

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Al Kendi Computer Systems
SM 04A, New Al Safiya Building, Hor Al Anz, Near Abuhail Metro station
Dubai, United Arab Emirates 89116