Services

Strategic Advisement
One of the biggest challenges of implementing and maintaining technology is finding the appropriate IT strategy. Leveraging our experience across multiple industries, we can help you align IT infrastructure and support services with your business. We start at the roots of the business and work our way up by asking simple but often over-looked questions like "What is it you are actually trying to accomplish?"

Example - Everything to do with IT is a headache for you. Day-to-day problems with technology get in the way of performing work and users daydream about destroying their computers with baseball bats. We will work with your IT staff and business owners to identify core problems and draft both short and long-term plans to steer your organization towards technological bliss.

Example - You have computers, you have people, and you want to put those two things together in a way that makes sense. Focusfire can help you build an IT strategy that best leverages the people and technology you have in place to allow your business to run as smoothly as possible.

Solutions Advisement
Trying to determine the appropriate technology solution for a given problem is difficult. Vendors push solutions that give them the highest margins. Documentation is limited to technical detail or ambiguous use cases. We provide value to your business by sifting through the fear, uncertainty, and doubt of solutions research to help you find the technology solutions that best suit your needs.

Example - You would like to achieve redundancy of critical systems. We can help you determine the best overall redundancy processes for your particular business as well as the appropriate technology types and vendor solutions. We are vendor-neutral, so our recommendations will be built around your needs, not sales margins.

Example - You are an infrastructure manager struggling to get a critical infrastructure project approved. We can assist you in identifying approval roadblocks and help you overcome them by building trust with management - giving your organization an unbiased, 3rd party review of the proposed solution.

Outsourced CTO
For longer-term or transitional engagements we offer outsourced infrastructure management services. We provide leadership and guidance on an ongoing basis, often at a substantial cost savings over hiring an in-house Chief Technology Officer. This offering is especially useful for small and startup businesses looking for enterprise-level guidance.

Example - Your CTO has left the company unexpectedly and you need to maintain stability while you look for new staff. We can fill the void and provide a clean pick-up and hand-off of infrastructure management.

Example - You are a small, growing business with big business IT needs. You're not at a size that you can justifiy hiring a full time technical executive, but your business could greatly benefit from CTO-level advise and guidance. Focusfire can provide you with enterprise advice within your small-business IT budget.

IT Sanity Check
One of the questions that often nags managers and SMB executives is "Are we doing the right thing?" Many technical and industry standards exist to help measure your business against your peers, but in reality, it is very difficult to use a standard as an absolute against a unique business. We work to meld standards with common sense to provide you with a straightforward report of your business' IT strengths and weaknesses.

Example - You are an executive for a small or mid-size business and are uncertain if your IT infrastructure and staff are in sync with the goals of the business. We will come to your offices, perform interviews with IT and business staff, review your infrastructure, and ultimately present you with a report measuring your company's IT performance.

Example - A vendor has presented you with a potential solution. The salesperson has promised you that it's the perfect fit. It will solve all your problems, it will do your laundry, and the maintenance costs will be minimal because it will never break. We can provide a sanity check against the vendor's promises and help you decipher the reality of the solution.