IT Services

Below is a quick synopsis of each of our core service categories. You can click the category title or the “Learn More” link for more information on each of our core service categories. There’s also further IT services listed on this page below the core service categories including our pricing models, service level agreements (SLAs), data recovery, project planning, management, and more.

Cloud Hosting & Data Center Services:
Lakeside It solutions covers all of our cloud hosting, data center services including support, maintenance, installations and management of all major cloud & data center providers. We also have our own private cloud solutions such as our ITaaS or Information Technology as a Service solution. In conclusion, it migrates all your infrastructure, data in to the cloud, and transforms your IT requirements in to a fixed monthly fee. It also includes unlimited support, hosting, email accounts, a phone line for each user, and all the IT infrastructure needed to run a business. Learn More

Cybersecurity:
Our cyber security feature covers all business cybersecurity needs from ransomware, virus protection/removal, intrusion detection prevention, encryption, two factor authentication (2FA), firewalls, content filtering, HIPAA compliance, VPNs and more. Learn More

Digital Marketing:
We Manage your complete digital online presence, maximizing your return on investment (ROI) on digital marketing and opening new revenue streams by engaging a larger more refined demographic. Learn More

IT Infrastructure:
Lakeside IT infrastructure contains all of the hardware and software containing logic that requires being configured when installed and managed to maintain proper operating condition. Everything from servers, desktop computers, printers, scanners, WiFi, virtualization, security camera systems, audio visual (AV), point of sales (POS) and more. Learn More

Lake View Network Monitoring & Management:
Our means of monitoring your network for outages, bottlenecks, outbreaks, intrusions, errors / events, hardware notifications, out of date software / drivers, and real time performance analysis. We also supply a means for  managing backups, anti-virus, system maintenance, defragmentation and updates  for hardware/software. Our approach is to be proactive rather than reactive, allowing us respond to issues before they become downtime causing events. With many more features this is a vital piece of any properly maintained network. This service is included in some of our serviced packages such as ITaaS or can be purchased separately a la carte. Learn More

Web & Software Development:
We both create new custom or support existing web, software, and smart phone applications. We use  the most  widely used programming languages and development suites. Learn More

Wiring & Power Management:
All of the physical equipment that goes in to a business network. From the cabling for sending, receiving data, voice signals, racks for securely storing IT equipment, and power devices such as uninterruptible power supplies. UPS’s provide backup power utilizing batteries in the event of power outages. Learn More

We are “Vendor Neutral” provider meaning we don’t dictate which service provider(s) or equipment vendors you use. We make recommendations explaining the pros / cons of each solution including some of our own, but the ultimate decision lies with you and what is best for your business. Your decision may affect the Service Level Agreement (SLA) we make with your company due to limitations or known issues with certain products. For instance we cant make guarantees for things that are out of our control and some solutions provide us less control than others. It gives us less ability to fix and or avoid potential issues. Then certain products and services are poor quality with known issues and compatibility problems. In such cases, all we can do is make you aware of these short comings and develop an SLA that covers these issues making less guarantees dictated by the limitations of the chosen design. A perfect example would be we can’t guarantee 100% internet up time when only a single provider is obtained and no device capable & configured for automatic internet connection fail over. The general rule of thumb is you get what you pay for, but we do pride ourselves on providing the highest level of service using equipment and providers with the greatest Return on Investment (RoI). Simply doing more with less by staying away from products that have huge brand name markup, utilizing open-source solutions and recommending what you need not what has the highest price tag. We don’t employ sales people only sales engineers. The difference being sales people work off commission and sales engineers don’t. Sales people use techniques like wining and dining. They tell you what you want to hear not what is actually possible or practical. After a sale is made you don’t hear from them again until they have something new to pitch you. Our sales engineers don’t make anything extra by recommending the most expensive equipment and services. Since they are the ones who will need to take this solution from a concept to a working system and one that works as it was sold. We believe customer service takes precedence over harassing people to buy services. Our sales strategy is built around developing trust. By being brutally honest, doing what we say we will and through fair business practices. It’s not all about the money it is about providing services that help the community and enable our customers the greatest chance of success through what we know best information technology.

Utilize the proactive IT consulting background of the professional engineers at Lakeside Techs to establish a comprehensive IT plan for an electronic and automated transfiguration of your company that coincides with your business goals. Our tactical IT consulting will assist you mechanize and digitize actions, enhance your software integration, and apply newest technologies.

Within a matter of minutes, we can jump on a screen sharing session anywhere in the world on any device to perform remote support 24/7/365. Onsite emergency work has a same day guarantee with arrival in a few hours depending on the severity of the work and the location of the site. All onsite work is done by qualified tier two field technicians. Onsite project work is handled by our in-house systems & network engineers all with over five years of experience or more and several industry certifications. Whatever the work rest assured we’ve got the right tech for the job and even our engineers are over seen by our senior level engineers. We have this structured approach in place, so nothing slips through the cracks and work gets done right the first time.

We understand how important technology has become to run a business. In response to this we make ourselves available via ticket submission, email and phone call nationwide 24/7/365. Our friendly and knowledgeable technicians work in a three-tiered system including a help desk manager. The help desk manager reviews all the work done to verify it’s done to our standards, assigns tickets based on skill sets, and assures that we are meeting or exceeding our service level agreements (SLAs). All work is tracked and managed within our ticketing system that logs everything done including who, what, where, when and why. Our data can be accessed real time for updates and is submitted with the monthly invoice so you can see exactly how your money was spent. Allowing for in depth analysis with charts and graphs that easily makes sense of all that data.

A Service Level Agreement (SLA) is our guarantee of what level of service we can provide to your business. There are obviously many factors that will go in to this agreement and can dictate everything from hours of availability, remote or onsite response time, pricing all the way to system, network up-time. We develop a unique SLA for every one of our clients based on their specific needs. For example some businesses don’t work 24/7 so wouldn’t require that level of service. Also, up-time needs vary drastically were some companies can stomach being down due to equipment failure or internet outages. Whereas other companies could lose millions of dollars for every minute they are down. That’s why we custom tailor this agreement differently for each company based on what works best for you. The tradeoff here being what you are willing to spend to guarantee how your system performs, our response to issues if / when they occur and the number of redundancies put in place to offset failures or outages. Even performance can be measured and guaranteed to run at certain levels such as available bandwidth, phone lines, processing power, latency, IOPs and load. Also, cybersecurity including encryption of data in transit or when being stored, protection against internal / external breaches, the loss of patient data, critical operations data or intellectual property and compliance’s such as HIPAA or PCI/DSS. Finally, continuity of business items such as backups disaster recovery. There are many levels of this that hinge on cost compared to how much data is being protected from loss, the frequency in which this is done, the amount of time it will take to fully restore, how often this is being tested to confirm the backups are in place, and that the data being backed up is viable in the event it needs to be accessed then restored to its normal everyday operating state.

We offer a free technology audit which is a great jumping off point. We send out one of our sales engineers to go over your business model and exactly how you use technology in your business. We then document all of your existing technology infrastructure including the exact number of machines down to the version of software you’re running. This information is yours whether you choose to continue service with us or not. With this information our sales engineer will work with our team of network/system engineers to make detailed recommendations and an accurate quote on going service costs. Then when you are ready to move forward, we also offer the on-boarding for free.

We can buy or build anything from the most basic desktop to the most extreme workstation or gaming rig. Our installation services include liquid cooling, over clocking, SSDs, RAID arrays, dual video cards, multiple/curved monitors, dual processors and error correcting code (ECC) RAM. We make sure to back up all your files including noting what applications you use. When we set up the new device, we make sure to put all the files back where they were previously, all your desktop icons, website bookmarks, screen settings and any accessibility options such as high contrast. We move over all your email and configure your inbox. Add access to all you mapped drives and printers. Join the computer to the domain so your username and password will work. We pay attention to the littlest detail because you could spend anywhere from 6-10 hours working on this machine a day. Nothing is worse than a slow or computer that crashes all the time ruining your efficiency.

New Locations, Data Center & Office Moves 

Data Center & Office moves can be a lot of work with many details that need to get taken care of. With Lakeside Techs there’s one aspect that’ll be easy and that’s the technology side of it. We can get all your IT equipment moved without being damaged. Make sure your new location will be suitable for your technology needs.  We provide technical assistance for any changes that need to be made such as running new data or voice lines, installing cameras, setting up a data center, or an IT closet for your equipment. Adding additional power outlets, ventilation and properly placing access points for complete WiFi coverage. We would perform all this prior to making the move. Then the weekend before you start using your new space we would move and setup all your equipment at the new location. Then we can make sure everything is working as it was before if not better.  The switch over is seamless with no downtime or anything lost during the transition. Finally, we have a technician onsite the day following the move to assist in anything that comes up or that may have been overlooked.

New Office Locations

With new offices such as branch locations its important to have the same systems in place at each location making servicing and training the same from site to site. Then linking all of your sites together either via a centralized office, data center, or cloud hosting solution is paramount. You cant have a different set of data at each site. Obviously, somethings will be unique to each site like the inventory at each location, but you will need to be able query what’s available at each location from any of the other locations. You also need the ability to track everything from the central office. This requires several technologies such as virtual private network (VPN) that connects the networks together securely acting as one large network as though it was all in the same location. Then a database application ERP/ERM for keeping track of all your inventory, customers, invoices etc. These records   can be accessed and modified simultaneously at each site so that everyone sees the exact same information. Without this ability you are essentially operating separate businesses or you’re spending A LOT of time manually synchronizing this information between sites.

Systems & Data Migrations (On-premises to Cloud, Cloud to Cloud, Cloud to On-premises & Hybrid)

Whether its migrating to the cloud, from the cloud or away from an end of life (EoL) product(s) we have years of experience performing such migrations. We have our own private cloud specifically designed for small and medium sized businesses. It is perfect for hosting all your critical business infrastructure with rock solid reliability, high performance hardware, the ability to scale up or down, blazing fast 10 gigabit internet connections and add new services or servers at the click of a button. We also support all the major cloud providers such a Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s AWS and IBM’s Softlayer. There’s nothing wrong with the aforementioned providers but with our in-house solution we can offer a much higher level of service and customization that others can’t or wont. It being our equipment we can also make changes that could make all the difference for your needs that most providers would be unwilling or not capable of doing because they’re just a re seller of someone else’s infrastructure. We can also set you up with your own private cloud to avoid noisy neighbors or for security requirements. Lastly, if you have old out of date no longer supported software or hardware, we can move you to the latest and greatest technologies ditching that old end of life equipment or software without losing your precious data.

Is your computer running slow, locking up or just not what it used to be? We offer full tune-up services including performing all the updates, defragmenting the hard drives, removing any virus malware etc., tuning the settings, deleting temporary files, cleaning out any dust, removing unused files and applications. We will bring your computer back to its former glory.

With proper systems integration we can eliminate duplicate work such as having to enter the same data in multiple dissimilar systems or the time-consuming process of having to check multiple places to find a single piece of information. We can create a singular pain to work from that queries data from multiple systems at once saving several steps and valuable time. Seamless integration can keep mistakes to a minimum and efficiency at a maximum. We see a lot of businesses that continue to maintain a much older system because they still required the information on the older system and were unable or willing to get that information moved to a newer system. We come up with solutions to fix all sorts of inefficiencies and get what you have working together so you’re not wasting time just to make what you have work. Sometimes just working isn’t good enough and if we can save several steps on each action, it really adds up in the end. Return on Investment (RoI) is always a factor in something like this, but if we show a significant RoI then it speaks for itself. Say it costs $10k to get these systems properly integrated, but if it is saving you $20k a year in overtime wages then it’s the best possible solution.

Pay as You Go
Pay as you go is the most basic and commonly used model. It’s simple you pay a predetermined hourly rate billed in fifteen minute increments based on the size, complexity and Geo dispersion of your infrastructure. We charge one way travel and have a two-hour minimum for onsite work. Using a single rate isn’t fair to the smaller clients that’s why we take all these factors in to consideration. However, don’t be fooled by the least expensive provider. We can send out a tech with little or no experience for let’s say $100 an hour and it takes them three hours to do a job. Now if we send out a highly experienced technician at $150 an hour but it only takes them one hour to do the same job. Not only did you save $150 on the job but you also saved two additional hours of downtime and time is money. Some of the problems with the pay as you go model are it makes predicting IT expenditures very hard as some months without a lot of issues you pay very little. Eventually though something major will break and that month or months could be astronomically high. Not to mention the downtime incurred during this time making the impact of the event even larger. Now hopefully you’ve been giving away enough to be able to cover this expenditure and if you haven’t it could mean taking out a high interest loan or even worse going out of business. Lastly, the pay as you go model almost incentives certain providers to do poorly because the more often, they’re fixing stuff the more they get paid.

Prepaid Discounted Bulk Support Hours
In this model we study your support usage and determine approximately how many hours you use a month. We then discount those hours based on how many are purchased and you pay at the beginning of the month. If you still have unused hours at the end of the month we recommend using  them for as preventative maintenance work, so as not to waste them. On the other hand, we will warn you as you get low and after going over you are billed at the regular hourly rate before the discount. You can adjust the number of prepaid hours at the beginning of each month. There is no roll over but we rarely see businesses with excess time because we study your usage over several years and perform the free audit so the numbers end up being very accurate.

Fixed Rate Support
With our fixed rate support billing plan you pay a fixed amount per month regardless of how much support you use. We base the rate on the number of active employees, complexity of your infrastructure, hours worked during the day and week. Clearly a business that operates 24/7/365 will pay more than a business only working from 9 am-5 pm. This model makes it very easy to manage and predict your IT support costs for the year. You never need to worry about the unforeseen costs as the price will be the same no matter what. This also incentives the IT services provider to keep your infrastructure running in tip top shape because the less things we have to fix the more we make. in conclusion, this translates to less downtime and promotes a proactive approach rather than a reactive approach. By performing all the preventative maintenance and utilizing our Lake View real time monitoring platform which is included in this model. We solve issues before they become business impacting events. Meaning less downtime and easier than ever budgeting.

Lastly our IT as a Service (ITaaS) model takes the fixed rate model to the next level by including all the hardware, software, support and hosting in a fixed monthly rate. Perfect for startups that don’t have the funds to purchase everything needed at once. Instead, those payments are broken down in easy to pay monthly installments with zero unforeseen costs. We host all of your infrastructure in our high availability cloud so no giant power bills from running a cooling all that equipment. We provide thin client PCs which are like dumb terminals used just to access your desktop in the cloud. From anywhere with an internet connection, you will have access to all your files, data, email, authentication, accounting software, ERP/ERM suite, CRM, document management, intranet and website. Since its cloud based you never need to worry about equipment failure, data loss and up-scaling/down-scaling ever again. System or file restorations and the adding or removing of resources is a matter of mouse clicks away. Never again worry about hardware or software upgrades and licensing. With our cloud extender we can push workloads from the cloud to your office for greater efficiency. Then with baked in network security able to screen viruses before reaching your systems, real time monitoring and automation via our Lake View platform. Also, dual WAN active/active internet connection utilizing route optimization that constantly monitors network conditions and routes your data accordingly avoiding bottlenecks and outages. Cloud based VoIP is also included with all the business features you need. Calling groups, call forwarding to cell phone or other extension, voicemail to email, system attendant w/ greeting message, call recording, hold music and IVR auto dialer. This truly is the ultimate worry-free IT solution that’ll keep you focused on what counts running your business and not the mundane of your technology presence. We have a 100% up-time guarantee or your account is credited for every minute of downtime.

Have a failed hard drive or a deleted file you need recovered? We have several advanced recovery tools that can recover deleted files even failed drives. Our recovery rate is 90%+ so we can’t guarantee recovery but we have a very good track record. If it’s a file or data you absolutely need let us try to recover it. The process can take a really long time so we tend to flat rate the labor based on the amount of data that needs to be recovered. It can take multiple tries as we will find several versions of the same file so to get the one that you want, we may have to run the tools more than once. Databases tend to be the hardest since they are so prone to corruption and a corrupt database is no good. The easiest tend to be text files but we won’t know until we try.

A rule of thumb is you are only as good as your last backup. There are many of ways to lose your data including corruption, accidental deleting, CryptoLocker/virus or a failed drive. By performing a grandfather father son (GFS) backup rotation is crucial. This gives you a monthly, weekly full, and a daily incremental backup. Which allows recovery from each day and saves on space since we aren’t doing a full backup every day. The recovery time can take a while when just doing file level backups that’s why snapshot images are great because they backup/restore almost instantly and the files can be in use without the wait. This does require special software or a virtualized environment. Then we have disaster recovery which snapshots your entire system offsite, now your protected against building loss and the restoration time is much quicker. The downside is its much more expensive because you need a second set of your infrastructure at another location. If you can’t afford any downtime it really is the only way to go.

Have a windows desktop, laptop or server displaying a blue screen with an error on it? This is referred to as a blue screen of death or BSOD. This indicates a serious software, hardware, or driver issues. The only way to fix it is by performing a memory dump and analyzing this dump for what is causing the issue.

 The first question we almost always get is what’s the difference between a CIO and a CTO. The simple answer is a CIO focuses on managing infrastructure for the business operations. Whereas A CTO creates technology to sell to customers. Underneath this paragraph is a more in-depth breakdown of both the roles. Could you benefit from the decision making ability of having a CIO/CTO on the payroll but can’t justify the expenditure. A virtual CIO/CTO might be perfect for you then. Only pay for what you use, but feel free to list the position as filled giving your organization the appearance and expertise without the six-figure salary. Your virtual CIO/CTO can do everything from researching the best IT solutions for your business, managing your IT assets, performing vendor negotiations, performing resource and staff acquisition. When acting as your virtual CIO/CTO all decisions are made from the point of view of your company ignoring what works best for us and focusing on what is best for you.

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

• Serves as the company’s top technology infrastructure manager
• Runs the organization’s internal
• Works to streamline business processes with technology
• Focuses on internal customers (users and business units)
• Collaborates and manages vendors that supply infrastructure solutions
• Aligns the company’s with business priorities
• Developer’s strategies to increase the company’s bottom line (profitability)
• Has to be a skilled and organized manager to be successful

Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

• Serves as the company’s top technology architect
• Runs the organization’s engineering group
• Uses technology to enhance the company’s product offerings
• Focuses on external customers (buyers)
• Collaborates and manages vendors that supply solutions to enhance the company’s product(s)
• Aligns the company’s product architecture with business priorities
• Develops strategies to increase the company’s top line (revenue)
• Has to be a creative and innovative technologist to be successful