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Managed IT Support: Water Authorities in South Carolina (Questions/Answers)

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Ready To Pull The Plug On Your IT Support?

Don’t let ineffective IT support clog your project pipeline! Keep the flow steady and make progress with a partner who prioritizes productivity

Let’s play a word association game.

Water.

Your turn. In your mind, what do you see? What imagery and thoughts does your mind associate with “water”? Probably some of these:

  • Flow
  • Stream
  • Container
  • Canoe or other vessels
  • Fish and aquatic life
  • Technology

Wait – “technology”? That’s right!

If “technology” didn’t come to mind right away, that’s no big deal. In fact, most people probably don’t associate technology with water. In fact, the logical thought is that water and technology should most definitely NOT mix!

But they should.

In fact, technology is a very important friend of water. Nobody knows this better than water authorities.

  • Water authorities are regulating bodies overseeing water treatment and supply, sewage disposal, drainage, aquatic life, and pollution. Many of the laws in place today focus on water quality and serve the purpose of protecting human and aquatic life, and give management for supply and treatment to water authorities.

Water authorities are responsible for delivering water supply to communities, as well as the collection and treatment of water. To make sure the water that a community has access to for drinking, cooking, bathing, or somehow using is clean, treatment facilities rely on technology to report intake quality and output quality. Rather than make guesses and hope for the best, facility staff at water authorities that oversee treatment operations share public reports on water quality, through the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA).

Because of the SDWA regulations for quality of public drinking water, and the standards put out by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) based on consumer health and contaminants found in water, water authorities carefully monitor and report on water quality. In South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) helps water systems monitor and maintain the best quality levels. With such a concentrated population along the eastern United States coastline, and so much commercial, residential, and military maritime activity, municipalities are eager to report to consumers when surpassing quality standards.

Standardizations, regulations, and oversight necessitate the use of technology to keep up! Can you imagine manual testing and reporting today? It’s not like buying a water test kit at the store, checking the test strip against the color-coded chart, and making an estimated guess at water quality. Modern testing systems use advanced technology, with computers constantly processing thousands of computations and reporting levels regularly for water authorities to closely monitor.

Entire communities are depending on computer systems at regional water authorities working at their best, so shouldn’t water authorities partner with an IT company on which they can rely? From the processes that clean and filter drinking water to the systems that report on water quality and process billing transactions for customers, there is no room for failure with the technology on which water authorities depend.

While protecting these systems against failure may not be at the top of the priority list for water authorities, but imagining what could happen is enough to make anyone shudder with anxiety. Children and families depend on this technology for clean water. Shouldn’t water authorities depend on a partner who prioritizes their processes?

For water authorities, the answer is Cyber Solutions, Inc.

Cyber Solutions knows the needs of regional water authorities, inside and out – seriously. Working with Cyber Solutions as a managed IT services provider helps water authorities avoid ugly situations like:

  • Slow or sluggish computers
  • Temperamental technology
  • Unexpected systems failures

What is a managed IT services provider? When a company outsources IT processes to a managed IT services provider (MSP), the MSP delivers bundled services designed to improve operations and reduce costs. The company retaining the MSP is able to save by avoiding the budgetary line item of the full-time salaried IT staff and receive ca oncentrated focus on the IT areas it needs through a subscription fee arrangement.

Partnering with an MSP provides a more strategic positioning for water authorities, in that the binds of the “break/fix” model are no longer applicable. Water authorities eliminate the on-demand service model, where services are only retained on demand as needs arise – typically in response to a problem or emergency. When a partner like Cyber Solutions is right in South Carolina and can guarantee 99.9% uptime, why take the risk?

Cyber Solutions delivers managed IT services to water authorities well beyond the basic:

  • A strategic IT advisor to consult on long-term strategy
  • Round-the-clock Help Desk support
  • All-in-one IT department at your fingertips
  • Tailored, automated IT services that are customized to water authorities
  • Remote monitoring and maintenance

Aside from the potential downtime a systems failure may bring, Cyber Solutions also provides network security to thwart threats from sophisticated cyberattacks, ensuring complete diagnostics and treatments by water authorities so that communities continue to have safe water supplies.

Cyber Solutions understands the complex nature of the technology used by water authorities and can help maintain maximum efficiency and productivity to avoid downtime. From network security and protecting data, Cyber Solutions provides care for mission-critical technology for a low monthly fee.

Sure, a monthly subscription fee is a guaranteed payment that impacts the budget. But choosing to avoid paying that small monthly fee for an MSP is like drinking water straight from the source without filtering it – taking a huge risk. The combined monthly cost of retaining an MSP is lower than the internal full-time resources otherwise needed and is much lower than the costs of reacting to an emergency or a breach.

Don’t let systems “circle the drain” before connecting with a partner you can trust to keep your systems flowing!

Check out Cyber Solutions, Inc., for the most recent technology information and breaking news.