By Shelah Ogletree, for The Record

Recently a local business switched to PARKERTECHGROUP of Dunn mainly because they are a Managed Services Provider (MSP). According to owner Curtis Parker the change may have come just in the nick of time. MSP is a more preventive and managed approach to computer service as opposed to something breaks and you fix it.

"Within 24 hours of installation we detected an imminent server crash and were able to avert it," he said. "I believe they could have lost as much as 72 hours of operation if we hadn't discovered the problem and prevented the breakdown."

Mr. Parker said MSP is the company's newest and most exciting service. Several local clients have implemented MSP - one being Carolina Therapy Services.

"The team at PARKERTECHGROUP has been a pleasure to work with," Carolina Therapy Services President Kim Schmidlin said. "As our business has grown they have been able to make adjustments and customize their service delivery to meet our needs. They're flexible and answer questions or come for service calls late in the day.

Mr. Parker says that's a core philosophy of PARKERTECHGROUP.

"We want to be a partner with our clients. We're not interested in just selling a product. We want to improve our client's information technology and bottom line," he said. "Hardware and software are getting cheaper every day, but data loss security intrusions and lost operational time is getting more and more expensive."

In addition to MSP, PARKERTECHGROUP offers Internet back-up in a secured redundant manner and offers Web sites and e-mail which are then maintained by either PARKERTECHGROUP or the clients themselves. They also provide video surveillance systems and cameras which can be monitored over the Internet as well as traditional sales and service.

"We're mostly a business to business company," Mr. Parker said. "Our clients are CPAs, attorneys, medical practices and retail/wholesale businessses, as well as smaller one or two person companies."

Mr. Parker said not too long ago a medical facility server monitored by PARKERTECHGROUP went down at 4 a.m.

"They didn't know about the problem, but our technician was waiting at their door when they came to open up. It saved countless hours of downtime at a time when they would have been seeing patients."

PARKERTECHGROUP has four full-time employees and one part-time. They cover a five-county area with MSP and provide World Wide Web service. The company even has one customer in Spain. During the economic downturn many local businesses have had to cut expenses, but PARKERTECHGROUP has had no layoffs.

"Everything is relative in this economy," Mr. Parker said. "But I believe we're holding our own."