I work in a small company in the Houston area that is too small to have a full time IT person on staff. We need to be able to have somebody come out on demand to fix problems with computers and software that periodically arise. This is pretty vanilla stuff: Windowss operating systems, Microsoft Office, Outlook, etc.

Can any of you recommend a vendor who does that kind of work?

Buck,
Our company is in the same boat. We use a small MSP in the area that has worked well for us. If you'll shoot me an email at thunderkatalyst d0t ag at gmail d0t com I'm happy to put you in touch with the owner.

It can be worthwhile to look at the security standards of any managed service provider.

Remember the cities in Texas that lost all their data due to it being encrypted not too long ago? They supposedly all shared the same MSP -- that's how they probably got in.

See [url]https://www.truenorthnetworks.com/blog/msp-responsible-for-texas[/url]. From the article:

Quote:

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The threat actor that hit multiple Texas local governments with file-encrypting malware last week may have done it by compromising a managed service provider. The attacker demanded a collective ransom of $2.5 million, the mayor of a municipality says.

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According to this definition, an MSP is not really what we need:

"A managed service provider (MSP) is a company that remotely manages a customer's IT infrastructure and/or end-user systems, typically on a proactive basis and under a subscription model."

We just need a guy to come out on an as-needed basis.

Buck,
I know what you mean. I used the term MSP somewhat loosely as another name for our 3rd party IT support vendor.
The firm I mentioned that we use provides both proactive support/strategic planning & retroactive resolution for issues that arise. Our business doesn't have much that we need actively managed just support when we have outages/glitches in the matrix.
They are local and only work with local businesses. Anything they can troubleshoot/resolve remotely they do but they also come onsite to resolve problems, present recommended solutions, etc.
I think it would be worth a call but if not no worries.

Buck, i have a recommendation for you as well. Depending on the size of your business, it might be a good fit. You can email me at my username at gee mail.

Checkout CITOC.com. They do MSP, hosting and other stuff.

IronEdge is based out of Houston. We've used them, and they're pretty good.