On-premises IT support for offices that need real control over their systems.
Cloud services are useful, but not every business system belongs entirely in someone else's data center. Archway Point plans, builds, and supports local infrastructure for businesses across St. Charles County and the greater St. Louis area.
The systems your office runs on, kept working
Most small offices accumulate their technology rather than plan it. A server bought six years ago for one purpose now runs four. The network was extended by whoever was available. Backups were set up once and never verified. Nothing is documented, and the person who knew how it fit together left in 2023.
That arrangement works right up until it does not, and the failure usually arrives at the worst possible time. Our job is to get you from accumulated to intentional, without a rip-and-replace project you cannot afford.
Start with an assessment
Before recommending anything we document what you actually have: servers and their roles, network layout, workstations and their age, backup configuration and whether restores have ever been tested, who holds administrative access, what is under warranty, and where the single points of failure are. You get that documentation whether or not you hire us for the follow-on work. It is yours.
Office IT and local infrastructure
- Workstation setup, imaging, and user account provisioning
- Office networking, Wi-Fi coverage, switching, and cabling coordination
- Routers, firewalls, VLAN segmentation, and remote access
- Printers, scanners, shared devices, and file access permissions
- Employee onboarding and offboarding done properly, including access removal
- Vendor coordination, so you are not the one translating between three support desks
Servers, storage, and backup
- Server sizing and specification based on your actual workload, not a vendor's upsell
- Local file storage, shared drives, and permission structures that match how your team works
- Backup design to the 3-2-1 standard, with scheduled restore testing
- Disaster recovery planning with a documented recovery time you have actually measured
- Hybrid setups where local storage and cloud services each do what they are good at
- Written infrastructure documentation, so the next person is not starting from zero
Cybersecurity fundamentals
Small businesses do not get breached by sophisticated attacks. They get breached through reused passwords, missing multi-factor authentication, administrative accounts nobody has audited in years, and unpatched software. We work through the fundamentals that eliminate most of the real risk: account and password review, MFA rollout, admin access cleanup, backup verification, email security records, and a realistic patching schedule.
Typical engagements
Projects and ongoing support, scoped to what your office actually needs.
| Engagement | What it covers | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure assessment | Full inventory of servers, network, workstations, backups, and access, with written findings and a prioritized plan | 1–2 weeks |
| Server build or replacement | Sizing, procurement, configuration, data migration, permission structure, and documentation | 2–6 weeks |
| Backup & disaster recovery | 3-2-1 backup design, off-site replication, recovery plan with measured recovery time, and scheduled restore testing | 1–3 weeks |
| Network & Wi-Fi overhaul | Coverage survey, switching and access point layout, firewall and VLAN configuration, guest network separation | 1–4 weeks |
| Office move or buildout | Cabling coordination, rack and equipment relocation, internet provisioning, cutover planning, day-one support | Project based |
| Ongoing IT support | Defined response times, patching, monitoring, user support, onboarding and offboarding, vendor coordination | Ongoing, monthly |
What we will tell you honestly
Independent advice is the point. We are not reselling anyone's hardware quota.
When cloud is the right answer
If your workload is small, variable, or remote-heavy, we will say so rather than sell you a server you would spend five years depreciating.
When your hardware has life left
Plenty of "we need to replace everything" situations are actually a RAM upgrade, a drive swap, and a cleaned-up backup job.
When the real problem is process
Some outages are not technical. If the actual issue is that nobody owns a system, more equipment will not fix it.
When you should hire internally
Past a certain size and support volume, an internal person is cheaper than an outside firm. We will tell you when you hit it.
Common questions
Does a small business still need an on-premises server?
Some do, some do not, and the honest answer depends on your workload. You likely still want local infrastructure if you move large files daily, run software that requires a local database, have regulatory or client requirements about where data sits, or have internet service that cannot be trusted to stay up. If your team is five people working in shared documents, a server is probably overhead you do not need. We will tell you which situation you are in, even when the answer is that you should buy less than you expected.
Is on-premises actually cheaper than cloud?
Over a three to five year window it often is, for storage-heavy and compute-heavy workloads. Cloud pricing is excellent for variable demand and unforgiving for steady, predictable load, because you are renting the same capacity every month forever. The comparison has to include hardware, power, replacement cycles, and support time, not just the sticker price. We build the actual comparison for your numbers rather than arguing the general case.
What does a proper backup look like?
The working standard is 3-2-1: three copies of your data, on two different types of media, with one copy off-site. Just as important, and far more often skipped, is testing restores. A backup nobody has ever restored from is a hope, not a backup. We set up the backup, then we periodically prove it works by actually recovering from it.
Do you offer contracts or one-time help?
Both. Some clients want a monthly support arrangement with defined response times and a set number of hours. Others have a specific project, such as a server build, an office move, or a network overhaul, and want it scoped and finished. We are happy either way and will not push a retainer onto a business that only needs a project.
How fast do you respond when something breaks?
Response targets are set in writing as part of a support arrangement, tiered by severity: a whole office offline is not the same as one printer misbehaving. What we will not do is promise a response time we cannot hold. If we are not the right fit for the coverage you need, we will say so.
Can you work alongside our existing IT person or vendor?
Yes, and it is common. Sometimes there is an internal person who handles day-to-day support and needs help with infrastructure projects. Sometimes a vendor manages a specific application and we handle everything around it. We document what we change and coordinate rather than territorializing.
Related services
Get a straight assessment of your infrastructure.
Tell us what you are running, what keeps breaking, and what you are planning. We will start by documenting what you have before recommending anything.