By Christine Graf
In the early days of the pandemic when non-essential businesses were forced to close, companies relied on information technology professionals to help keep their businesses running.
According to Mike Tompkins, IT director at myTechs in Clifton Park, his company’s staff responded quickly in order to meet the need of customers. In addition to providing support and help desk services, myTech offers IT consulting, security, project management, virtualization, and disaster recovery.
“One of the biggest initial things that came up was how to support people to work from home because you do have people’s personal internet that they are using and maybe even their home computers in some instances,” he said. “We worked to make sure that employees are working safely when they aren’t in the office.”
Some customers had to purchase equipment and upgrade infrastructure, while others already had the necessary systems in place. Supply chain issues made obtaining IT equipment difficult. Tompkins said prices have increased 5-10 percent.
“For the last few years, work from home has sort of been on the horizon,” he said. “A lot of our customers were working on this before COVID even hit because they wanted some kind of solution for employees who work out of state or are traveling constantly. We were already ramping up for this without knowing what was coming.”
During the shutdown, myTechs operated drop stations where customers picked up equipment. Everything was sanitized and only one person was allowed into the room at a time.
“We did things like sending laptops home and making sure they had a nice workspace setup with two monitors in some cases,” said Tompkins. “We set it up for most our customers so that they felt like they really were working in their office and not just sitting at their dining room table doing work.”
When it came to ensuring data security, myTech employed the use of Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections. A VPN provides an extra layer of privacy and anonymity.
