How Housing Authorities in South Carolina Can Use IT Services from Cyber Solutions

Housing Authorities provide low rent or free apartments to qualified residents. The housing authorities in South Carolina ensure that housing is available to citizens who qualify. Like housing authorities in other states, they must apply for federal funding for their public housing efforts. They often face budget shortfalls and need to trim their expenses. For this reason, housing authorities in SC need cost-saving, efficient, and secure technology solutions.

How Housing Authorities Rely on Technology

Housing Authorities in South Carolina and throughout the country face many complexities when complying with federal, state and local requirements. The right technology can help to ease these management burdens, reduce costs and improve service delivery.

The following are some of the ways housing authorities in South Carolina use technology:

• To administer federal funds to provide public housing.
• With management dashboards to show data in real time to help employees keep track of administrative tasks.
• By using automated employee management tools to help with personnel requirements like leave requests, W2 production, and paycheck processing.
• Taking advantage of email and Email Hosting which has replaced mail as the main form of communication.
• Replacing traditional landline phone systems with Internet-based VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) systems and cell phones.
• Automating as many HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and state reports as possible.
• By using Electronic Document Management Systems to reduce paper, printing and storage costs.
• Setting up vendor portals for purchasing needs, communication and vendor registrations.
• Establishing Section 8 landlord portals to track availability and payments.
• Developing webpages to communicate information to those they work with and those they serve.

Just like any business, housing authorities are constantly looking for ways to use technology to increase productivity and reduce costs. And, because they process and store sensitive data, including Social Security numbers, criminal background checks, and credit check information, the South Carolina Housing Authority must ensure their data is always secure. This where our services help.

The team at Cyber Solutions has been working with the Newberry Housing Authority in Newberry, SC, to upgrade and maintain their computers and IT system. They count on us to:

• Ensure their information technology systems always run efficiently and securely.
• Protect their data, keep confidential information secured, and provide IT programs that support productivity.
• Address their employees’ IT concerns or questions in an expedient manner.
• Assume responsibility for the functionality of all their computer systems and IT programs.

The Newberry Housing Authority knows that our Managed IT Services save them IT worries and money. We provide everything proactively, like software updates and hardware maintenance, and we’re available 24/7 if they need us. With our proactive IT performance monitoring our tech engineers identify and remediate issues on their network, servers, and desktops before they create problems and downtime.

What We Can Do for You

We offer a broad range of discounted, fixed-fee technology services designed to help housing authorities meet their technology needs and stay within their budgets. Our Managed IT Services provide a complete technology management solution including data protection and proactive monitoring of all key functions on your network, servers, and workstations. It’s designed to provide you with a fixed-cost solution, predictable IT investment, and optimal productivity.

• We can slash your IT bill, so you have money to provide housing for those in need.
• You pay a fixed monthly fee for our services. This makes it much easier to stay on budget.
• Our services save you from hiring IT staff that you have to manage and provide benefits for.
• We’ll ensure you can securely access your data from anywhere and at any time, make sure it’s recoverable in the event of a loss or other disaster, and protect your data and your email from cybercrime and spam.

Spend Less Time on Your Servers and More Time Providing Service

Our goal is to reduce your total technology costs and IT-induced stress. You won’t need to worry about complying with the latest security regulations. When you outsource your IT care to us, we’ll take care of everything. We’ll put your mind at ease, so there are no IT worries and you can focus on your job requirements. Our team will:

• Provide access to the most current, state-of-the-art products and applications without you investing in expensive equipment and software licenses.
• Respect your IT budget and prevent expensive IT surprises.
• Prevent IT issues before they occur and proactively monitor your network.
• Provide support and service from technicians who are trained on the latest technologies, software, and equipment.
• Provide service level agreements with clearly defined goals, offering review periods so you can grade us on our performance.
• Mitigate the risk of staff leaving with valuable IT knowledge.
• Provide remote access for service and support with 24/7 help-desk hours.
• Have up-to-date accreditations, such as Microsoft Partner certifications that you don’t have to pay for.
• Meet compliance demands for legal, health and government regulations.
• Ensure the security of your data and IT infrastructure with offsite data centers.

Have You Considered Migrating to the Cloud Like the Housing Authority in Ohio?

The Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority (LMHA) serves more than 17,000 people in the Toledo, Ohio area. When their federal budget was reduced, they needed a creative way to stretch themselves to better serve people, not an aging IT infrastructure. They decided to migrate all their technology to the Cloud.

As a result of the migration, their IT costs dropped dramatically. And they also save time. They now use virtual servers that can spin up in a fraction of the time it took to do this with their physical server hardware. And after a storm flooded their server room, they could still stay up and running. Their employees can now work from home if needed and access their projects securely in the Cloud. Plus, their workers can use secure mobile apps in the field on their own devices.

Cloud computing can do this for you as well. Cyber Solutions specializes in cloud computing for organizations in Upstate South Carolina. It provides many benefits including cost savings, efficiency, and speed. It’s deployed via a public, private, or hybrid cloud. Cloud services benefit your organization because you can scale your IT solutions up or down rather than being tied to on-premise servers and storage.

Housing Authorities are divesting from the use of onsite servers and using cloud computing. Many small businesses, including most of our clients, are moving their IT to the Cloud. There are 6 reasons why:

1. Cost: Cloud computing eliminates the capital expense of buying hardware and software to run data centers.
2. Speed: Computing resources can be provisioned within minutes.
3. Scale: You can have just the right amount of resources whenever you need them.
4. Productivity: There’s no need to set up hardware, patch software or manage other time-consuming tasks. As a result, this increases the productivity of your employees, and they can concentrate on their core responsibilities.
5. Performance: Cloud services are updated on a regular basis to the latest generation of fast and efficient computing hardware. This offers benefits over a single corporate data center, including greater economies of scale and reduced network latency for applications.
6. Reliability: Cloud computing makes data backup, disaster recovery, and business continuity easier and less expensive since data can be mirrored from multiple sites on the cloud provider’s network.

Whatever IT service or support your housing authority needs, the Cyber Solutions team in Upstate South Carolina is here to help.