When it comes to Information Technology, your company's biggest cost is the time wasted by employees sitting around while their IT systems are not working properly. According to IDC research, over 40% of computer problems go unsolved. This is a huge drain on your employees' productivity. InhouseCIO services help you reduce your total cost of IT ownership while simultaneously improving efficiency and productivity. InhouseCIO provides your organization with an assigned team, proactive management of your IT systems and unlimited support at a flat monthly fee.

InhouseCIO's plans are pretty easy to understand and are priced based on the size of your network. We provide you with one flat monthly fee and in turn we become your complete IT department. Because our prices are based on the size of your network, you can rest assured that you don't have to pay huge monthly fees for services you don't use. Our service plans are designed for organizations with 5-100 employees. We will happily provide you with a price quote. Simply call us at 877-361-3499 or fill out our online form.

Hourly consultants are paid to fix problems. They are not paid to prevent them from happening. They only make money when your system breaks, and the more often it breaks and the longer it stays broken the more money they make. InhouseCIO only succeeds when you are up and running - which means that your goals and our goals concerning IT are exactly the same. Going with a flat fee service plan reduces your IT costs, improves the performance of your IT systems and avoids catastrophic and very costly IT failures.

InhouseCIO provides each of our clients with an assigned dedicated team that proactively manages and monitors your IT systems. This team becomes your company's IT department and just like an IT department at a big company, your assigned team consists of the following members: CIO, IT Manager, Field Engineer and Help Desk. This team becomes an extension of your organization and is responsible for all aspects of IT related to your business such as strategic technology decisions to solving everyday technical problems.

InhouseCIO proactively monitors your network devices. Devices such as computers, servers, firewalls and more. So even though we are not always at your location, we are proactively monitoring your network ensuring that your IT operations are running smoothly. At InhouseCIO, we emphasize both people and technology. We know that it requires the watchful eyes of our engineers and automated tools to proactively monitor your network to keep your IT operations running smoothly. Here's step by step process highlighting how this platform works:

1. InhouseCIO installs a small program on your computers and servers.
2. Your computers securely communicate with the data center.
3. InhouseCIO monitors a broad range of network devices such as computers, servers, firewalls and more.
4. InhouseCIO proactively manages these devices. This includes management of your antivirus, antispyware, patches, backup and more.
5. Your InhouseCIO team notifies you of any potential issues and fixes many of these problems before they even occur.   
6. If you encounter a problem, you can contact our help desk or one of the engineers on your assigned team.  With your permission, your InhouseCIO engineer can immediately remotely access your computer and resolve the problem immediately. 

Yes. The platform used by InhouseCIO was originally designed for banks and commercial applications. This platform has undergone intense scrutiny from all types of security experts. This software is used by governments, financial institutions, and other security conscious organizations. This platform operates entirely over secured 128-bit encrypted connections. The agents send only asset data and performance data to the data center. Confidential information such as user's passwords does not leave the user's machine. The agents send this information over outbound port 443 (SSL). There is no threat of a virus spreading or hack over the Internet due to this outbound connection. Client side firewall configurations are not needed with this platform as it operates entirely over outbound connections to the data center. This allows the agents to work in any network configuration without introducing vulnerability to inbound port scans or network attacks.

We do not sell hardware or software. We aren't interested in selling you computers, servers or any other IT equipment. We truly want to partner with you to become an extension of your business. Think of us as your own technology department. Of course we will assist you with purchasing hardware or software by advising you on which products to purchase and where to purchase them. However, we are not associated with any hardware or software companies, so we can provide you with unbiased recommendations where we look out for your best interest and what works best for your organization.

Programming is not a core focus for InhouseCIO. However, we have programming partners that we can recommend to assist you with programming services.

InhouseCIO provides the support of a full time IT staff without the financial burden of having these staff members on your payroll. Allowing InhouseCIO's team to handle your IT management and support allows you to focus on your business without having to dedicate an individual or individuals in your company to IT management. This improves your organization's productivity, efficiency and reduces the total cost of ownership. When you hire InhouseCIO, you get the best of an IT Department and the expertise of an entire team. InhouseCIO provides you with an entire IT department at your fingertips for a fraction of the cost of hiring a full time IT person.

You would be surprised to find out how much time your dual-role employee spends on IT work each week. Many managers greatly underestimate the amount of time spent by these dual role employees fixing IT problems. All the time your employee spends on fixing IT problems is time not spent on generating revenue for your organization.

Since your servers are being monitored 24/7, we immediately know when there is a problem and begin working on resolving it. We initially try to fix that problem remotely so that your server is online as soon as possible. If we cannot resolve this problem remotely, we call the designated emergency contact at your company before your office opens. Your field engineer is then dispatched to your office and fixes the problem before your employees begin working that day. This is a great example of how InhouseCIO can save your company time and money by minimizing or eliminating downtime of your IT systems.

InhouseCIO is more than capable of working with organizations that have multiple locations and/or remote employees. In fact, many of our current clients already have multiple locations, remote employees and several networks connected together.

All service plans include unlimited IT support, proactive monitoring and an assigned team. The main difference is that the Silver plan includes unlimited remote support and up to 2 hours per month of onsite support. The Gold plan includes unlimited remote and onsite support. The Platinum plan goes a step further and includes a regularly scheduled half a day of onsite helpdesk every two weeks. Other than these differences, you can expect the same level of support.

None. The only requirement is that your computers or servers be running a supported Microsoft operating system (Windows XP, Windows 2000 server, etc).

InhouseCIO focuses on small and medium sized businesses in the Chicagoland area that have 5 to100 computers. However, we also have clients with less than 5 computers and over 300 computers. Whether you have a few employees or over 100 employees, InhouseCIO will provide you with exceptional and unlimited IT support that makes us one of the best and most unique in the industry.