FAQ’s

We offer a variety of IT services for businesses of all sizes, but our technology stack and processes are ideal for small to midsize businesses.

We start with an in-depth assessment and documentation engagement. This helps us understand the big picture and the important details within. Then we introduce you to our teams, and your key points of contact and help you understand how to get the most out of GCS going forward. We review the results of our initial assessment during a meeting with your key stakeholders to identify and prioritize key IT initiatives. Finally, we will build your technology roadmap over the coming months and years

We conduct regular business review with all of our managed clients. During these meetings, we review the key metrics over the previous quarter, security posture statistics, your roadmap, and any other upcoming budgeted expenses. We also have an open discussion to make sure we get a chance to listen to any concerns you have and watch out for upcoming changes to your business that could impact IT.

While we are the entire IT department for some clients, we supplement the existing IT department for many others. It’s hard to do it all on your own! We pick up wherever you leave off when it comes to IT. We’re here to support you, keep the lights on, keep the bad guys out, and help your team improve by working with the vast knowledge base and helpful team that GCS offers.

Our biggest strength is our team. As one of the most experienced managed IT firms in central Texas,  we have been in the game for 20 years, and many of our employees have been with us for most of that time. We only hire the best, and it’s not just about technical skills. It’s also about professionalism and the ability to help customers understand without being the typical “tech person”. We’ve also built our business on being flexible and not a “one size fits all”. We offer a blend of hourly and fixed-fee services to fit most needs and budgets.

While our help desk is open 7 days/week and 365 days/year, we are not a true 24x7 shop, but are open to discussing your specific needs around overnight support

We have a specialization in cybersecurity, an area we see many other MSPs lacking. We also have a dedicated project team and the ability to manage very large migrations and infrastructure projects.

It really depends on the individual needs of each client. We can offer custom training sessions depending on the scope of a project and leverage 3rd party virtual and in-person training partners for more specific needs.

Our biggest hurdles are usually customers that are either not engaged enough or don’t care about IT or security enough to invest in it properly. Moreover, occasionally we have a point of contact that is not able to effectively translate our recommendations to decision-makers. In many cases, we are able to overcome these obstacles with thorough communication, education, and a serviced-based approach to the relationship.

We offer a wide variety of training materials and professional development funding for our staff, ranging from technician to business leadership positions. We foster a culture of continuous improvement both inside and outside the office.

Throughout our 23+ years of experience, we have built strong practices and unique systems around servers, networking, virtualization, cloud, and cybersecurity.

We are the largest, privately and locally owned IT provider in central Texas. We pride ourselves on craftsmanship and being fun/easy to work with. Other MSPs offer you a simple fixed fee to take care of everything and then deprioritize your needs when you consume too much. We, unlike others, tailor our services to fit your business and offer flexible, on-demand consumption models that align more directly with your actual business needs.

All of our services are performed by in-house full-time employees, all with current background checks. We dedicate specialized staff in each tech area that our clients need.

We start with an in-depth assessment and documentation engagement. This helps us understand the big picture and the important details within. Then we introduce you to our teams and your key points of contact and help you understand how to get the most out of GCS going forward. We review the results of our initial assessment during a meeting with your key stakeholders to identify and prioritize key IT initiatives. Finally, we will build your technology roadmap over the coming months and years.

During the onboarding process, we will need to work with a primary point of contact and, if applicable, a technical contact with your current provider who has access to the IT systems and their context. As we advance, we will want to be engaged with a technical resource or IT sponsor within your organization. This can be someone other than a tech staff, but ideally, someone with leadership responsibility or access to decision-makers.

Our help desk is always available by calling (512) 249-6080. We staff our NOC, and actual human beings answer the phone, not an automated voicemail system. You can also email support@gcstechnologies.com to automatically open a ticket and prompt a callback. We also offer support through our website and a client portal.

Our escalation process is very mature and involves communication with key stakeholders, both with GCS and the client, on 15-minute intervals or until the issue is resolved. You will also have a dedicated Technical Account Manager overseeing these events to resolution.

Our primary help desk is staffed and maintained at our physical office in Austin, TX.

Every project is scoped and designed by a team of Solution Architects. Before these project plans are ever presented to the client, they are thoroughly peer-reviewed by our project team engineers. These people will actually do the implementation. This allows them to ask the right questions, modify the scope as needed, and set appropriate budgets.

Many of our operational procedures have been drafted around ITIL standards and best practices. Our cybersecurity processes and approaches are driven by either a specific compliance need or the well-known NIST cybersecurity framework of best practices.

We frequently test our systems and processes and help you test your systems based on your individual needs.

Our NOC and support teams communicate and manage maintenance windows and planned system outages.

We build and maintain Visio network diagrams for all of our client environments.

We maintain a centralized document repository for all our clients and will share read/write access as needed.

We can support the entire IT infrastructure from a cybersecurity perspective, and leverage trusted 3rd party vendors for specific telephony and audio/visual needs.

Once per year or as needed depending on your specific case

We use best-in-class EDR and MDM tools to completely manage and protect all user endpoint devices.

We use ConnectWise as our primary ticketing system and also leverage other 3rd party software tools to extend the capabilities of our ticketing system even further.

All of our hardware solutions are customer-owned, meaning we quote and sell it to you, you own the device, but we fully manage it for you. We do not offer managed hardware and tend to see our clients prefer their own solutions that anyone can manage. This prevents having to completely replace and reinvent solutions any time there might be a change with your MSP.

Yes, we use best-in-class MDM tools to manage Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android devices.

Our comprehensive managed security service includes a full stack of sophisticated tools that eliminate the need for a true SIEM solution outside specific infrastructure or compliance needs. Our security processes follow the principle of “zero trust”. We include multiple layers of protection that prove to be more effective than just a SIEM solution. For clients who also need a SIEM solution, we are partnered with a trusted 3rd party vendor that can be fully managed by GCS or co-managed with the client.

Our infrastructure monitoring platform provides reporting on system up-time metrics in addition to several other variables.

We use a centralized, cloud-based monitoring platform that can ingest SNMP logs from any device. These alerts flow directly into our NOC and are monitored daily in real-time.

Our MDM platform can report on system health and alert when devices perform poorly. We ensure all end-user devices are functioning at the highest level possible.

We leverage Microsoft Bitlocker or macOS FileVault for local disk encryption. These settings can be managed centrally, and keys can be stored and rotated in the cloud for improved security and manageability.

We are partnered with a local data center in Austin, TX, for any potential co-location or managed hardware needs. We typically recommend public cloud hosting and are most experienced on the Microsoft Azure platform and support many clients in AWS as well.

You can request support over the phone, via email, or through our website and client portal. Escalation occurs during critical issues or emergencies and invokes a 15-minute cadence of communication with all key stakeholders. Our help desk is open 7 days/week, 365 days/year, from 7am to 11pm CST. Over 95% of our support requests are responded to in less than one hour. Out of our 45 staff members, over 35 are technical with expertise across various IT skill sets. Our help desk and NOC are operated out of our physical office space in Austin, TX.

We have various reports available within our client portal and can provide custom reporting upon your request.

Our centralized documentation portal can be made available to any user who may need access to it.

We offer a wide variety of training materials and professional development funding for our staff, ranging from technician to business leadership positions. We foster a culture of continuous improvement both inside and outside the office.

Our team follows a wide array of blogs, podcasts, webinars, training sites, etc., to keep up with evolving technologies and changes in the market. We also attend relevant conferences yearly to expand our knowledge base and network of partners and customers.

We have various tools that allow clients to provide feedback during service/project engagements and always encourage client reviews. Our service leadership teams review these metrics, and feedback is given to our teams regularly to continuously improve the client experience.

Supporting non-technical users is one of the primary reasons we exist. We focus on hiring personable people with excellent communication skills that can explain complex topics in simple terms. The pandemic also forced most of our client base to work remotely. Still, even despite that, we’ve been successfully supporting our remote clients for years.