Service Industry - Mentoring and Apprenticeship
Did you know that In 1998 half of the CDs produced worldwide were free? They showed up in every mailbox and featured a free month of AOL. At one point AOL alone was gaining a new subscriber every 6 seconds. I purchased my first real laptop for $320 with a big crack in the side and a damaged screen. It was a Dell 386 25Mhz PC that ran Windows 95 and featured a 14.4K modem. I had friends (who were still in high school at the time) working at Quality Computers (QCNET) who hooked me up with the password to access the QCNET modems. I could connect my 14.4K modem to the World Wide Web without having to join AOL and part with $29 every month.
A quarter of a century later in 2023 my wife and I purchased Quality PC. They don’t make laptops with modems or CD-Roms these days. This year QPC has invested in tooling up with new systems and processes to bring QPCTech – Managed IT Services to market. QPCtech senior technicians combine over 50 years of IT and Business Support experience. Our promise to Hillsdale is to keep finding and developing talented young IT professionals and train them to provide the community with Quality IT Services.
What exactly do we mean by Managed IT Services?
Managed IT Services are Technical Support Services delivered under a Service Agreement that provides specified rates and guarantees the customer and consultant a minimum monthly rate.
WHAT WE DO = Technical Support: You call us with questions or projects and we provide the geeks you need to get the job done. So that we all understand what is covered under Technical Support we will have a document called a SOW (Statement or Scope of Work).
HOW WE DO IT = Service Agreement: This agreement defines what areas of responsibility we will have for the maintenance and performance of your Technical Services. We will have a very detailed document called an SLA (Service Level Agreement) that specifies the systems that QPCTech will be responsible for and how quickly QPCTech shall respond etc.
QPCTech leads our customers to Best Practices in their businesses. They benefit from our investment in modern IT support tools like Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM). We keep our customers safe by leveraging offensive not just defensive security tools such as Managed EDR. We offer managed firewalls and managed networks. leveraging open source and non-subscription* managed network technologies.
*Our commitment to Hillsdale is to build the local IT workforce, we will do this by managing our networks and firewalls with competent certified network technicians. We can and will build this workforce. Contrarywise If we put our IT budget into Silicon Valley subscription products our economy will continue to migrate out of Hillsdale into big tech.
The Economics of Cloud Services
First, let’s clarify what a Cloud Service is. A cloud service is a service that you subscribe to that may have been a major investment of hardware and software on an in-house server in the past. Email is a classic example: few of us would remember a time when a local business owned its email server.
Technically I suppose even Quality Computers hosting your QCNet email was a cloud service provider in that sense. You could collect your email at your leisure… without having to keep a server in your closet always dialed into the modem to collect your email. Today a lot of what we used to build a computer can be done “in the cloud” and you can operate the application for which you once owned a dedicated computer for just a few dollars a month.
This low price for high business value is self-evident but what is less evident is the impact this has on the local economy. At QPCTech we believe that all of us buying locally preserves the local economy, but on the other hand, we cannot deny the obvious advantages of using Cloud services. How QPC approaches this juxtaposition is what sets us apart from other service providers.
What We Believe
We believe that we can develop an IT Professional Services industry in Hillsdale. By giving young people opportunities and expecting them to take responsibility. We will empower them with the tools and certifications that they need to develop their professionalism. QPCTech will serve the greater Hillsdale area and beyond. Our objective is to automate and optimize the maintenance of IT systems. Eliminate and minimize service costs. Get the most business value out of every IT service at your company. We will establish a business process that establishes accountability and rewards hard work.
The Hillsdale Area Career Center offers a fantastic curriculum for Cyber Security. Many of these students have talents that are in high demand and will continue to be. Why not develop and showcase the talents of these young professionals here in Hillsdale? Why spend our Hillsdale dollars with IT companies out of town in Lansing, Battle Creek, or Ann Arbor when we could shop locally? Better question yet: why not build a premium IT Managed IT Service firm that competes and wins the contracts for businesses in those towns and pulls the young professionals into the Hillsdale area?
How We are Getting it Done
We have asked ourselves these questions and we can’t think of a reason not to step up and lead the IT Service industry from right here in Hillsdale. We are the third family to own the Quality Computers (Quality PC) brand and we are committed to the tradition of building talent and serving business needs in the community.
New owners Tim and Kimberly Lindley each have 25 years of IT and business administrative experience and have served large corporate and small business clients.
Our technology staff includes Certified Network Professionals PC repair specialists and Database Administrators. We hold certifications In ITIL and Software Asset Management. Our approach answers the governance requirements of NIST, GLBA, CARF, HIPAA, and PCI-E.
We are eager to help you meet your business goals.
We Know – We Care – We Can Help