For most companies and organizations, managing a Local Area Network (LAN) is a balancing act. On the one hand, LANs are indispensible to any organization’s operations. On the other hand, LANs are costly to manage and require skills that many organizations cannot afford.
Organizations tend to follow two directions in regard to LAN management. One is to hire in-house staff. This approach makes sense for larger organizations, but is beyond the reach of most small to mid-sized organizations. The other approach is to call on the services of local LAN experts. This approach is effective but can be costly for the routine PC and server support.
A new approach that many organizations are exploring is to outsource day-to-day LAN management. The idea is to engage a service provider to take care of the routine tasks of LAN management, while using in-house staff or LAN experts for more complex tasks.
Appia’s LANCare service, for example, takes over the day-to-day maintenance of PCs and servers, freeing IT staff to focus on more mission-critical projects.

To implement LANCare, an agent is installed on each desktop or server. According to a predetermined schedule the agent automatically defragments hard drives if needed, and downloads and installs software updates, including Symantec and Spyware. LANCare can also provide proactive alerts for CPU, memory and hard drive capacity.

Even complex and time-consuming tasks like software deployment can be handled by LANCare. The software is simply added to the list of approved applications, uploaded to a network server, and downloaded automatically to each device. LANCare can also be used for device, system, and software inventories.
LANCare costs $15 per month per PC and $150 per month per server – far less than the other approaches organizations typically use. And LANCare is proactive, which means less downtime and greater staff productivity.