It’s true, managed IT is almost always the better value for most companies. Still, break-fix IT does have its advantages. Here are 4 benefits of break-fix IT services.

Benefit 1: Break-Fix Services Could Save You Money (Although They Probably Won’t)

With break-fix IT services, you only pay when you have a problem. If you have very few IT problems, this approach will save you money.

Disclaimer: In reality, companies that rely exclusively on break-fix services usually end up spending more money. An ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure, and a lot of things can go wrong in IT. That’s why managed IT has become more popular with customers lately.

Benefit 2: You Can Use Break Fix Services to Test Out a Managed IT Provider

Break-fix services allow you to test out a company before signing a month-to-month contract with them. It’s always nice to be able to evaluate a company’s professionalism and dependability before going month-to-month with them.

Disclaimer: Most managed IT companies offer a month-to-month contract as opposed to an annual one. So, “try before you buy” isn’t as big of an issue as it is in other industries. Many companies try out a managed IT company for a month and cancel if they don’t like the service.

Benefit 3: You Can Use Break-Fix Services When Your Staff Is Indisposed

Some companies are totally satisfied with their IT service. Yet, maybe they just had an emergency and their IT guy is sick or on vacation. In that case, break-fix is a solid solution for their business. The average cost of downtime for large businesses is an astounding $5,600 per minute. Even if your business doesn’t lose that much every minute, IT failures get expensive quickly.

Benefit 4: You Can Use Break-Fix Services If You Have a Limited Budget

Some businesses are going through a period where they don’t have the budget for even the smallest of managed IT packages, but they just had an IT emergency. In that case, break-fix can stop the bleeding.

However, there are managed IT packages for companies of all sizes. Here at Global IT, we have the small business packages, the enterprise business container, and everything in between. The small business container is very affordable, and it’s great value for most businesses.

Disclaimer: The Truth About Break-Fix Services

As mentioned before, break-fix services, despite the aforementioned advantages, are losing popularity. The reason is simple. The data shows that managed IT saves money and improves operations. That’s an irresistible combo for most businesses. After all, fixing small problems is much cheaper than fixing large problems.

The Best Break Fix IT Services in the Los Angeles Area

Companies in Santa Fe Springs, the City of Commerce, the City of Industry, and Los Angeles prefer Global IT when they need break-fix services or managed IT. That’s because we have 100% 5-star reviews on Yelp. Our customers know they can always expect tremendous effort for every project. If you’d like to read testimonials from our clients, click on the button below.

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DNS (Domain Name System) is a service that resolves a web address, like globalit.com, to an IP address, like 199.66.225.17, which is the location of a server that is hosting the website. In some cases just entering an IP address will direct you to a website. However, remembering a string of arbitrary numbers isn’t as user-friendly as entering an easily remembered web address. While humans prefer to communicate in words, computers communicate using numbers.

For example, let’s say you want to go to globalit.com. First, you would open your browser and enter the website you wish to view. After you press enter, a request is sent to a Name Server that checks for that particular website in its DNS databases. If the name isn’t found, the Name Server sends the request to another Name Server.  When a match is found, a response is sent back which says “Found globalit.com at 199.66.225.17”. Then your computer records this information in a temporary DNS directory, kind of like a phone book. Now each time you attempt to visit globalit.com, the computer locates it in the directory and directs you to the proper server hosting that website.

One of the most well-known free public DNS services is offered through Google. As of 2013, Google Public DNS is the largest public DNS service in the world, handling more than 130 billion requests on an average day. This is part of their effort in making the internet more accessible and easier for the public to use.

Many service providers offer DNS servers on the internet for public use. The DNS configurations settings are stored in the device’s or network’s TCP/IP configuration.

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In order to host your own website, you need an active internet connection and a database that is accessible from the internet that holds your website content. Many would argue that there are many more requirements, but this is basically all that is needed for someone to view your website. Now, the reliability, accessibility, and quality of the viewing experience can be greatly enhanced by adding in some more elements.

• If you are using a residential internet connection, chances are your IP (Internet Protocol) address is not static, which means it can change. So if I know the IP address of your website today, I can access it. However, if it was to expire tonight and I try to access it again tomorrow, I will not be able to if the address was changed by the ISP (Internet Service Provider). This happens frequently without the knowledge of the dynamic (changing) host.

• In addition, download speeds on consumer-grade lines are typically quite high, but the upload speeds are painfully slow, so if you have any pictures on your website, it will take quite some time for the page to load. This is frustrating for today’s internet browser. We are accustomed to pages that load very quickly, so when we come across a slow-loading page, we simply leave and find another page that doesn’t make us wait. It’s sad but true.

• Another factor to consider is the reliability of the website. If you are hosting a website at home or a place of business, chances are you have the website loading from a single computer, and if you’re smart, you will have a UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply) in case the power goes out. However, computers are known to crash and consumer-grade UPS’s backup power only lasts a couple of minutes. If your computer crashes or the power goes out for longer than your UPS can last, your website is inaccessible.

If you are determined to host your own website versus hiring a service provider and wish to maintain the level of reliability, accessibility, and quality that you would get, be ready to fork out some serious cash. You would need to purchase several static IP addresses, high upload bandwidth, backup generators, redundant servers, and networking equipment, and be ready to troubleshoot at a moment’s notice, night or day.

If you are still determined to host your own website but plan to do something simple like a little blog that only your family and friends will read, it’s still cheaper to use a blog-hosting service. If you are not concerned with reliability or quality, but you are with accessibility, you can register for a dynamic DNS address. This will give you a generic website name that will never change and stays current with your dynamic IP address. Your website will most likely be something like someothercompany.yourwebsite.com instead of www.yourwebsite.com or something along those lines.

If you’ve come to realize that using a web hosting service is in your best interest, there are a myriad of companies out there that provide web hosting. However, make sure you do your homework. There are a bunch of “companies” run by teenagers out of their basements, and other questionable organizations that may give you high upload speed, but lack redundancy or outage protection, or lacking in some other essential element. Do your research and choose a reputable company that has what it takes to host your website the way it should be. Global IT Communications is a premier web hosting provider.

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