What We Do
LightWire provides "Outsourced IT" for small businesses. So – what is Outsourced IT?
We like to think of Outsourced IT as being everything that, if you worked at a big company, your internal IT staff would do:
- Make sure the IT systems meet the needs of the business, both today and in the future
- Monitor your network, servers, and laptops / desktops to make sure they are running properly and resolve problems as they occur
- Manage and communicate with your external vendors (we call that pesky ISP when the Internet connection goes down)
- Make sure the risky areas of running a business are being looked after (are the backups running? Do we have AntiVirus protection? AntiSpam? Is our data safe?) and put in plans to help mitigate those risks
- Fix problems that your staff are having with their computers, and help them be more effective by training them
- Reduce costs for the company by standardizing on equipment, systems, and processes to increase buying power and reduce the complexity of deploying new systems?
- Design and deploy new systems and networks to meet the needs of your company
These are the basics of what an Internal IT department would do for your organization – however, many companies aren’t big enough to justify having a full-time IT person (or group) to manage their systems – this is where LightWire comes in. We provide the virtual IT team for your company. For each of our clients we provide a customized level of support - depending on their size, the complexity of their systems, and how ‘computer savvy’ their staff is, we work together with our clients to define what the right amount of support is for their unique situation.
Our existing clients exemplify this flexible approach – some of our clients we support entirely remotely (we have never been to their office!), on an as-needed basis; on the other hand, for many of our clients, we have specific, fixed days where we work at their office – for some clients this may be ½ day per week, while for others it may be 5 days per week – it all depends, and we work out the right level of support with you.
Our philosophical approach to working with our clients is based on our background in ‘big corporate’ IT – in these environments, IT is a 24x7 operation, and one where streamlining those tasks that can be streamlined yields enormous benefits in efficiency (and reducing errors). We bring this approach to our clients by implementing standardization, documentation, monitoring systems, and other tools (like the ability to remotely access any computer, even when away from the office) to calm the typically chaotic and disorderly approach to IT that is standard for small businesses. The benefit to our clients is significantly reduced need for issues to be resolved, and a predictable environment in which to operate.
