INSIDECOSTCO
BY STEVE FISHER
YOU’VE EMBRACED your dream and
started your own business. Maybe you were
prepared for most of the challenges you
face, but technology—keeping it updated
and secure—can keep many people off
balance, especially if their business has
been up and running for a while.
Challenges
Let’s look at the issues, according to
Intermedia, a Costco Services provider.
• You have amassed a bunch of tech
stuff, running everything off old servers
that are situated in a closet on the premises. These are hard to maintain and
update, especially since you don’t have an
IT person on the payroll. Besides, there’s
the fear of natural disasters that could
affect your property and destroy your
equipment, with all the important documents and data your business has amassed.
• You’ve tried to get along with “
free-mium” consumer-grade services, but as
the business has grown, and continues to
grow, you realize they don’t offer sufficient
levels of control and security. Valuable
business data is more vulnerable. And having a free email address, such as Gmail or
Hotmail, may give the wrong impression.
It could send a signal to potential clients
that your business is not all it should be.
• As your staff grows and may need to
access information and business applications while away from the office, the old
technology may not allow it.
• An antiquated system—and in the
tech world that can be not very old at all—
may not have automatic backups of your
data, which can leave your business at risk
of costly downtime in the event of hardware failure, lost devices or a cyberattack.
• Contracting a tech professional can
be expensive, and calling on a case-by-case
basis may not provide the immediate relief
your business needs.
Solutions
Solutions are readily available and
pretty simple:
• Choose a business-grade cloud ser-
vice for email, backup and file sharing.
• Add mobile access to emails and files
from any device for you and your employees.
• Backup and file sharing provide real-time backup of files, with fast restoration.
• Align your company with 24/7 phone
support for all technology.
Individual providers can solve each of
those problems, but, says Bernie Deckys, a
manager for Costco Services, Intermedia
provides all of the above.
“For years, Intermedia has offered
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The answer’s in the cloud
A new service from Intermedia
CONNECTING
For more information on Intermedia’s
cloud services, as well as details of their
phone service, go to intermedia.net/
Costco-Office365 or call 1-800-222-9125 to
talk to an expert.
high-quality business phones and service
at great savings for Costco members,” says
Deckys. “Now, a new service, separate
from phones, offers Costco members a
worry-free way to move to the cloud with
access to email, business applications and
file sharing and backup, all of which is
enhanced by Intermedia’s J.D. Power–
certified 24/7 support.
“With over 100 million commercial
users, Microsoft® Office 365® is one of the
most popular cloud services and certainly
one of the best,” he continues. “Many businesses love the productivity benefits that
Office 365 delivers; however, the process
of moving to the cloud, keeping data secure
and backed up, and having the resources to
manage it all can be intimidating for small
businesses. Intermedia delivers the solution to make it easy and affordable for
small businesses, and now we’re happy to
offer this through Costco Services.” C
