Net Friends is the technology success team behind your workforce. Founded in 1997, our experience began in Healthcare support at Duke Health and we've since reached across all sectors, including BioTech, non-profit, education, law, construction, manufacturing, and more. We do not limit our services to specific industries and can discuss what your IT support experience with us will look like based on your unique needs.
We are big fans of small businesses and we're passionate about making innovative, enterprise-grade technologies more accessible to SMBs. Our SOC 2 Type II certification validates our internal controls to deliver secure managed services, especially to organizations with compliance requirements like HIPAA and more.
Yes we do! Net Friends is headquartered in Durham, NC and we are experts in supporting today's modern distributed workforce.
Many of our customers here in the Triangle have offices and remote users in other states that we support. We also support customers who have offices in the EU and other regions of the world. A number of our customers who use our managed cybersecurity services have no North Carolina presence.
Learn more about how we approach supporting Anywhere Operations!
Absolutely! We provide support at an hourly rate for most IT needs, including project consultation. New clients may need to sign a retainer agreement and provide a small deposit before work can begin.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- Top 4 Scenarios Where You'll Need On-Demand IT Staffing
- Why You Need More Than A Break/Fix IT Partner
- How to Outsource IT Needs & Keep Your In-House IT Team
MSP stands for Managed Service Provider. An MSP is a company that provides outsourced IT services to other companies, usually for a fixed amount per month and usually for a fixed term such as one year. Net Friends is both an MSP and an MSSP, which stands for Managed Security Service Provider. An MSSP provides outsourced IT security monitoring and management services to help organizations protect their devices and systems from cybersecurity risks and threats.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- Five Questions to Answer Before You Sign A Managed Services Contract
- Top 3 Reasons Why Hiring a Managed Services Provider Can be a Game-Changer
- What Does An MSSP Do For Your Business?
- Net Friends Recognized by Palo Alto Networks as a NextWave MSSP Partner
There are no cons—using an MSP results in 100% rainbows and satisfaction. Okay, we're being playful here.
But this gets at an important point: MSP services are not right for everyone. Some business owners just aren't comfortable switching from the "in-house" or "transactional" service models to the contract services model.
The good news is that the last thing we want is an unhappy customer. When you contact us for services, our first goal will be to ask you some questions about your approach to IT. If you're not going to be well-matched with our services, we'll know right away – and we'll do our best to refer you to a provider we respect who may be a better fit for you.
A few advantages to hiring an outsource IT company include:
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- Why You Need More Than A Break/Fix IT Partner
- How to Outsource IT Needs & Keep Your In-House IT Team
- Top 7 Signs You Deserve Better IT Support
We offer two main managed service programs: NetVisor and NetCore.
NetVisor covers support for Windows and Mac workstations, mobile devices, and Windows servers. It also includes basic support for select applications and most cloud services, such as Office 365 and G-Suite.
NetCore covers support for network infrastructure devices, such as firewalls, wireless access points, UPSes, and network-attached storage.
Almost all Managed IT Services customers enroll in either NetVisor alone or bundle NetVisor and NetCore together. We recommend both services for customers who intend to deploy more than one or two network devices.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- Why You Need More Than A Break/Fix IT Partner
- Why You Need An Annual Infrastructure Assessment
- How Your IT Partner Contributes to Your Operational Maturity
With NetVisor, our managed IT services, we offer unlimited remote and on-site IT support (on-site support applies to requests within 50 miles of our office in Durham).
Our sophisticated Remote Monitoring & Management (RMM) software enables our ability to resolve most customer support requests remotely—sometimes even before you hang up the phone!
However, some IT issues, such as equipment that won't power on, must be resolved on-site. In those cases, we're happy to transfer your request to one of our on-site field services experts without any significant delay.
Our NetForce service for managed IT staffing allows you to offload IT tasks from your internal technology department or for IT projects into our hands. WIth a dedicated IT expert assigned to you, reserve our techs in half-day blocks and on a schedule that fits your needs.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- The Benefits of Hiring An Outsourced IT Company
- Top 4 Scenarios Where You'll Need On-Demand IT Staffing
- What is On-Demand IT Staffing?
All of our Managed IT Services offerings include unlimited support hours for valid support requests.
If you're looking for blocks of hours, our NetForce service for managed IT staffing allows you to reserve our tech experts for half-day blocks within a schedule that fits your needs.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- What is On-Demand IT Staffing
- Top 4 Scenarios Where You'll Need On-Demand IT Staffing
- The Benefits of Hiring An Outsourced IT Company
All of our Managed IT Services offerings have a contract term of 1-3 years. Signing up for a longer term allows you to lock in this year's pricing for the entire period, which can amount to significant savings in the long-run.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- Five Questions to Answer Before You Sign A Managed Services Contract
- How Your IT Partner Contributes to Your Operational Maturity
- Top 3 Reasons Why Hiring a Managed Services Provider Can be a Game-Changer
Because we invest so much preparation and setup into serving each customer, we do assess a fee when customers request early termination to the agreement. The amount due in such a case varies for each service, and depends on factors, such as how much time remains in the term and how much notice is given by the customer.
Yes, all of our contract services include an SLA. You can see a sample SLA for the NetVisor service here.
We place a very high priority on meeting our SLA standards. If a customer is concerned about our responsiveness, whether in a single incident or as a pattern, we will happily schedule a meeting with the customer to jointly review our internal metrics regarding SLA performance. If a problem is identified, we will create and execute a remediation plan, with the goal of regaining that customer's satisfaction with the service.
All of our customers receive exactly the same scheduling priority and level of service. We never discriminate among customers under any circumstances, whether it be to favor big customers over little, new customers over old, etc. If a request is important to you, then as your IT partner it is important to us as well.
Check out this sample SLA for our NetVisor service.
Our NetForce IT Staffing service aims to fill the gap between two traditional on-site service models: the "break-fix" model used by many small IT providers, where the customer has to request each support session individually, and the conventional staffing model, where an agency provides an employee who embeds with the customer for 40 hours a week. The flexibility built into NetForce from the beginning makes it the best model for IT staffing that we've seen.
With NetForce, customers can choose one of two solutions:
In addition, NetForce customers can choose whether to queue up tasks using our ticketing system or their own. This makes it easier to integrate our experts with your existing support tools, if that's a priority for you.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- What is On-Demand IT Staffing
- Top 4 Scenarios Where You'll Need On-Demand IT Staffing
- The Benefits of Hiring An Outsourced IT Company
When Net Friends was founded over 20 years ago, each one of our handful of employees was solely responsible for all the needs of their portfolio of customers. This made it very important to establish a relationship of mutual trust between the customer and the tech.
Our NetForce service preserves the feeling of those early days. We work hard at the outset of an engagement to match each customer with an IT Expert with whom they can establish that sense of trust.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- What is On-Demand IT Staffing
- Top 4 Scenarios Where You'll Need On-Demand IT Staffing
- The Benefits of Hiring An Outsourced IT Company
Actually, many of our customers choose both! We see the two services as complementary.
NetVisor, our Managed Services offering, is what we call a "foundational" service. This means that we recommend customers either enroll in this service or provide similar services to their employees using in-house IT staff.
Many customers start off enrolling in NetVisor and then add on NetForce to provide more intensive support on a limited basis to departments or locations that require it. Customers who enroll primarily in NetForce tend to already be providing managed IT services in-house, and are looking to augment their team with our experts.
Recommended Net Friends Articles:
- The Benefits of Hiring An Outsourced IT Company
- What is On-Demand IT Staffing
- Top 4 Scenarios Where You'll Need On-Demand IT Staffing
Net Friends offers penetration testing, or "pentest" services, for our customers' network resources. Customers can order a pentest for a web application – such as an ordering interface – or for a server, whether on a LAN or exposed to the internet. A pentest is a multi-day effort by a certified security analyst to test the defenses and vulnerabilities of a networked asset. At the end of the test, the analyst will compose a report on findings and deliver it to the customer, along with a set of recommendations to fix any detected problems.
Customers typically allocate 10-15% of their overall IT budget to security. This includes both 3rd-party reviews, such as our Risk Assessment and Vulnerability Scan services, and security software, such as email filtering and multi-factor authentication.
Recommended Net Friends Articles on IT Security:
- Zero Cost Security Improvements to Protect Your Business
- Is Your VPN Solution Optimized for Anywhere Operations?
- How to Eliminate RDP Vulnerabilities
- How to Check Your Trusted Platform Module (TPM)
If your support issue requires immediate assistance, please call our office. Email & web form submissions are only reviewed during business hours.