Reduce IT costs

Name: Atomik
Address: 169 Cotefield Drive, Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, LU7 3DT, United Kingdom
Telephone: 01525 540041

Over time businesses subscribe to various services and often pay for these for years without questioning what they are for, if they are needed and if they are good value. Sometimes not knowing what an item is, means not wanting to cancel it “just in case”.

It is important to make sure you understand the implications of changes to save money. A good example is changing Internet service providers. This could well have unintended consequences like downtime or a change of IP address which is likely to cause more cost than it saved.

Ask Atomik.biz to reduce your IT costs.

These include:-

Atomik.biz will look through these payments and will often reduce IT costs.

Cancelling services thinking that you don’t use them and finding that you do will probably cost you money.

IT Cost Audits

Examples of savings Atomik.biz have made include a company paying £3000 annually to support a customer database they no longer used.

Another company had moved office and was still paying for broadband at the old address. That customer received a refund from the ISP of nearly £1000.

Yet another customer was paying a considerable amount to support an old version of an accounting package. When they had a problem, they found the supplier could not support such an old version. In that case, our recommendation was to change to a different, much cheaper product which worked better in every way.

Broadband, domain and phone services can be changed to reduce IT costs and get better service in the process. It is crucial to consider the features and the quality of the service as well as the price before changing things. Remember, there is a cost to making the change.

Other services that companies are paying for monthly are services to give users remote access to their office PC. Not only do you have to pay for this, but it strikes dread into whoever is responsible for network security and is often not authorised.

Remote access needs careful planning and can usually be provided using systems already installed in many networks.

Atomik.biz will advise on hardware service contracts and can reduce IT costs for our customers.

Reduce IT running costs

Companies often overlook electricity usage as part of IT running costs. Setting power-saving options on equipment will make a worthwhile saving over the life cycle of equipment and might make equipment last longer.

Leaving computers turned on 24 x 365 uses up to 4.38 times as much power as turning them off when not in use.

Remote support functions are impossible if computers are off. Both automatic and manual updates and software upgrades are best done out of hours to avoid loss of productivity.

Wake on LAN

Wake on LAN (WOL) is the answer and allows a remote administrator to turn on machines for maintenance. A central computer or router turns on computers when needed but requires some configuration and testing.

Scheduled turn-on would save staff time and avoid productivity losses waiting for machines to boot. Users waste a lot of time when Windows 10 computers do significant startup updates.

Regular reboots have the additional benefit of reducing other problems and improving performance. Scheduled power-on options don’t typically allow setting bank and other holidays, so machines would turn on during holiday periods which is not very efficient and is not recommended.

Using smart POE switches and turning off VoIP phones out of hours will save power. These savings are small and would probably not be worth the effort, but turning phones off during non-office hours avoids the risks of unauthorised staff making expensive personal calls or other phone fraud.

Cost Savings

Turning computers off when not in use increases the life of the equipment and reduces hardware failures.

In some environments turning off equipment will also save on air conditioning costs.

Based on the domestic price cap from the 1st of October 2022, electricity cost of 34p per kW/h and computer equipment using 100w. The difference between having the machine running for 8 hours on workdays for 50 weeks a year compared to all the time is £229.84 per year. Multiplying that by the number of computers and setting up power saving makes sense.