Managed IT services in Longwood, Florida
A lot of Longwood's computers were set up correctly, once, by somebody who has since moved on. The setup still works. Nobody can tell you how.
Businesses where the computer is not the point
Longwood's commercial strips along SR 434 and around the older downtown run to contractors, workshops, light manufacturing, equipment suppliers, salons and small professional offices. In most of them the computer is not the product. It is the thing that prints the invoice, holds the job list and runs the one piece of industry software the whole business depends on.
Which means it gets attention only when it stops. The network was built by a relative, a previous employee or a contractor who did a decent job and left no notes. It works until the day it does not, and then nobody knows the password to the router.
The requests that fill a normal week
- The invoicing software will not open. Remote support first, because it usually is an update or a permission rather than the machine.
- A machine in the workshop has stopped appearing on the network. Monitoring flags it, and if it needs hands on the hardware, Longwood is a short drive from us.
- Somebody left and still has access. You raise a ticket and their accounts and devices are locked that day.
- Nobody knows what we actually own. Device management keeps a current list of each machine, its patch level and whether it is encrypted.
- The internet dropped and the card reader is down. Alerts reach a person rather than a shared mailbox nobody is watching.
Writing down what is already there
For an inherited setup, documentation is the first real deliverable and not a formality. The audit produces an inventory of machines and accounts, what each one does, who can reach it, and what we would change first. It stays in your possession, and it keeps being yours if you ever move to a different provider.
When you can reach someone
Tickets and alerts are taken 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and worked every day, weekends included. On-site visits run Monday to Friday between 3pm and 8pm Eastern, and at weekends by arrangement. A P1 (the office cannot work) gets a best-effort reply within two hours at any hour. That is a target reported on every month, not a staffed night shift.
Which plan a workshop tends to need
Businesses with more machines than staff usually start on Watch, a flat $149 a month covering ten devices, because it is priced on equipment rather than people. Offices where everyone has a login and an email account tend to land on Manage at $79 a user. Operate, at $129 per user, is for sites running their own servers or firewall. Minimums and worked examples are on the pricing page.
What you would still handle yourself
Four things are in production today: the helpdesk and ticketing system, remote support with device management, monitoring and alerting, and the client portal at portal.sentinelgrid.us. Backups, single sign-on inside client environments, and reporting in the portal do not exist yet. Until backups ship as a service, protecting your data stays with you, and for a business whose job history lives on one machine that is worth saying plainly. The build status lists what is built and what is not.
Longwood questions
Nobody knows how our network was set up. Is that a problem?
It is the normal starting point, and it is what the free audit is for. We inventory what is actually there, write it down, and rank what worries us most. The document is yours whether or not you go further, which matters because right now that knowledge exists in nobody's head.
Our computers are on a shop floor, not in an office. Does that change anything?
It changes what fails. Dust, heat, power cuts and machines nobody has restarted in a year are the usual causes, and monitoring catches those earlier than a person walking past does. Longwood is inside Seminole County where we are based, so when something does need hands on the hardware, going out is ordinary.
We already have a guy who fixes things. Why would we pay monthly?
You might not need to. Watch, at a flat $149 a month for up to ten devices, exists for exactly this: you keep whoever does the fixing and we put eyes on the equipment so the fixes start before the phone call. If that is the shape you want, say so and we will not try to sell you a bigger plan.