External IT

Insurance firms are faced with the complexity and high costs associated with securing, managing and distributing highly personal and often confidential consumer information. And every decision, transaction processed and communication delivered maybe subject to government scrutiny.

In the end, the reliability, security, availability and cost-effective performance of IT resources are critical business imperatives for every insurance firm.

We know these issues well from serving so many insurance clients. Our client's challenges no doubt look a lot like yours:

Security. Your client data and transactions must be secure, both from prying eyes and from actual loss. Because of this, IT resources and information assets must be physically protected and professionally managed, as well as encrypted and password-protected.

Disaster recovery and business continuity. Extended downtime is not an option. Therefore, failover systems must be in place, ensuring that hardware, applications and data are available to your staff, so that business operations can resume post haste.

Compliance. It’s your responsibility. Compliance guidelines do not allow for wiggle room.

High Availability. It’s a must. It’s beyond discussion. For this reason we deliver ready access to the same set of applications, communication tools and data, regardless of where you or your staff are working, and regardless of which computer they’re on.

Real-time insurance-related information for corporate and remote professionals can not be anything less than a given.

Affordability. The insurance is now being seriously challenged to control costs. Happily, this is one of the great advantages of cloud computing, particularly with the OS33 portal. Until now, reducing or eliminating capital expenditures for new hardware and software was only a dream. Waking up in the morning to fixed, monthly IT costs, was rarely more than a fantasy. Not any more.

How often have you heard, “Enhanced performance, for less money,” only to live a different reality? External IT honestly makes “more-for-less” come true.

Productivity. Knowledge workers, sales professionals and management staff all need the capability to connect to applications, and access data quickly and easily.

Often, they need to collaborate and access the same information. They also need to work with a consistent, yet customizable user experience, regardless of computer or location.

External IT has worked with several insurance firms enabling them to focus on what matters.

We’ve significantly reduced their IT capital and operational expenditures, and our clients report a demonstrable return on investment.

Imagine the make-over to your bottom line just by switching to a system where you only pay for the IT resources you use, where capital expenditures are nill, and where configuration management and upkeep costs are stable. And this is before you even factor in performance gains.

Our solutions for insurance firms focuses on security, disaster recovery and business continuity, regulatory compliance, high availability, productivity and affordability. The full complement of IT capabilities and protections.

Security. External IT protects clients with data centers and IT infrastructure that are, without question, among the safest in the nation. Twenty-four hour guards are supported by state-of-the-art biometric scanners and card readers. Our facilities themselves are secure against floods, fires, even earthquakes.

The OS33 Portal Desktop platform also makes it very easy for administrators to manage permissions. It’s the only platform with a self-service administration console to remotely manage all IT resources for every user.

The console gives you policy-based application access control to manage users, groups, applications, permissions, profiles, security and folder access rights.

Regulatory Compliance. External IT solutions can help you meet stringent regulatory guidelines, and help with ISO compliance for securing confidential data.

Our OS33™ Portal includes a security tool that allows IT managers or External IT support staff to enable, disable, and manage a set of simple, tightly integrated services for email management and on-line and off-line storage (including multi-year archiving solutions), helping to facilitate easy regulatory compliance.

We are also the only company to provide a unique self-service administration console to remotely manage all IT resources for each and every user.

The console is included in the OS33™ portal, providing policy-based application access control to manage users, groups, applications, permissions, profiles, security and folder access rights.

Are we as reliable as the sun coming up in the morning? We give it a run for its money.

High availability. If you’re not up, you’re not in business. It’s no different for us. Small and midsize companies need IT that’s every bit as reliable as that empowering a global firm, and that’s exactly what we deliver to our clients.

External IT delivers ready access to the same set of applications, communication tools and data, regardless of where you or your staff are working, and regardless of which computer or computing device they’re working with.

If a local failure occurs, you can log into the system from a different computer or different location. All you need is an Internet browser and you’re back in business. You can go right back to the same point in your work process, without any loss of data.

We offer fault tolerant network infrastructure with synchronous mirroring, and continuous data protection for servers with 24 hour rollback. You have your choice of high availability SQL and Exchange deployments.

Anywhere, anytime access is our most fundamental benefit. Whether you’re at headquarters, a remote office, at home or on the road, our clients will attest that we’ll keep you connected. Our facilities boast an uptime of up to five nines (99.999). Less than perfect? Nobody is closer.

Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity. In the event of a Data Center failure, our system can redirect everyone to a pre-determined failover site. It’s business as usual with little to zero downtime. And we incorporate a more flexible and reliable technology than you would have with Hosted Desktop.

Hosted Desktop relies on a network router. Unlike the name might imply, a router alone is not very good at redirecting users to specific resources based on the application they request, their permissions, location and other circumstances. A Portal Desktop, like OS33, occupies the perfect space—between your staff and your servers. This makes it far more adept at handling these challenges.

We take backups, at minimum, once a day, and can have them run at whatever intervals you request including continuous replication.

Compliance. The OS33 Portal Desktop includes a security tool that allows IT managers, or External IT support staff, to enable, disable, and manage a set of simple, tightly integrated services for email management and on and off-line storage. The Portal also gives you access to a built-in audit trail, and includes multi-year archiving solutions.

We also offer ISO compliance.

Productivity. The short description of what we deliver is this: we're unmatched. This isn't a mere claim, tucked away in a website. The External IT enterprise-wide virtual workplace is powered by state-of-the-art infrastructure located in our Data Centers, employing the very latest in network equipment and software, application and web servers, and robust internet connectivity.

We can save your company many hours a year, otherwise spent logging in, with our single sign on alone.

Your staff will have seamless access to personalized Web resources, Windows applications and services like Microsoft Office™, Exchange™, SharePoint™, Active Directory™, and SaaS. They can work with your custom business software as well as software-as-a-service applications.

As for even more exclusive capabilities, our mirroring feature allows multiple users to view and edit the same spreadsheet, document, presentation or file while being in different physical locations. And they can do it in real-time, allowing everyone to work through time-sensitive projects faster than ever before.

They can post announcements, leverage company-wide information assets and communicate seamlessly via email and integrated IM. And, they can do it all anywhere, anytime, on any computer.

If you have an overactive conscience, this competitive advantage might feel unfair. Don't be concerned. In time, most of our clients actually come to enjoy this feeling.

You can add new users, groups and locations in little more time than it takes for us to say "you can add users, groups and locations," and you can access training and support anywhere in the world, without restriction or performance degradation.

The OS33 Portal Desktop also works on an iPad. In a pinch, you can work with a screen as small as that on your smart phone.

Affordability. Today, every business is being seriously challenged to control costs.

When you partner with External IT, you’ll leverage the power, scalability and flexibility of the OS33™ portal solution. What does this mean?

You can seamlessly access software applications, files, emails and collaboration tools—all while reducing, or even eliminating, the need to purchase, operate and maintain servers and storage.

You can mix and match our cloud services offerings to maximize your budget, while meeting your business requirements. And only the OS33 Portal Desktop has a full array of administration tools to greatly reduce your IT department workload for the many routine IT management responsibilities.

Our Managed Hybrid Cloud services allow you to tap into additional IT resources like Amazon EC2™ and Microsoft Azure™, and our continuous replication and standby solutions typically come in at 80% less than traditional disaster recovery.

While cloud computing has only become a major new IT management tool over the last few years, we’ve been providing these services to companies across the country, and overseas, for nearly ten.

This means that our team of Account Managers, technical specialists, and operations staff have already worked with hundreds of clients to cut their costs and give them a tangible competitive edge through IT.

It also means, as we mentioned above, that we understand business processes across numerous industries. When we talk with you, we not only want to address your basic IT requirements, but discuss how we can give you an industry-specific advantage. That’s really the heart of what External IT cloud computing is about.

To discuss how we may be able to give you a competitive advantage, click a link on the left or the above heading Get Started.