IT Consulting for Small and Mid-Size Businesses
Plan a migration, integration or technology decision with an engineer who can deliver the work. NetSys provides written assessments, options with costs, project plans and acceptance checks, plus month-to-month advisory or ongoing management when needed.
The short answer
NetSys is an IT consulting firm for small and mid-size businesses. Engineers with nothing to resell assess what you run, write a roadmap and budget, run the migrations and projects it calls for, check IT before an acquisition and keep the plan current through virtual CIO reviews. Assessments carry a fixed price, and advisory runs month to month.
Service information by The NetSys Group. Our editorial standards.
The businesses that call us for consulting are rarely short of quotes. A hardware vendor has priced a server refresh, a cloud provider has priced the opposite, a software vendor has priced an upgrade, and nobody inside the company can compare them on the same basis. What is missing is an engineer with no product to sell who will look at what is actually running and write down what should happen next, in what order, and what it costs.
That is the engagement. Discovery first, documented in IT Glue so it stays current. Then a written assessment with the ten findings that matter most, a roadmap with costs, and options the leadership team can argue about with real figures in front of them. If the roadmap calls for projects, the same engineer runs them with a plan, acceptance checks and a cutover outside business hours.
How a technology consulting engagement runs
Discovery covers every server, cloud tenant, device, circuit, license and contract, plus a Rapid7 InsightVM scan so the roadmap starts from measured exposure. The assessment goes to leadership in writing, with findings ranked by risk and cost. Decisions get made with options priced on the same basis: keep, refresh or migrate, workload by workload. Projects that follow have a named engineer, a written plan, acceptance checks per phase and a cutover scheduled outside business hours. Afterwards, the virtual CIO cadence keeps the roadmap, the budget and the risk register current each quarter.
What Our IT Consulting Services Cover
Assessment and Roadmap
Know what you have before you buy anything.
- Written assessment of every system, account, vendor and risk, produced from discovery
- A 12-to-36-month roadmap with costs, sequencing and dependencies
- Budget models comparing an on-premises refresh with Microsoft 365, Azure and Azure Virtual Desktop
- Licensing and contract review, with what to cancel and what to renegotiate
Cloud and Microsoft 365
Identity first, then data.
- Microsoft 365 architecture: Entra ID, Conditional Access, Intune, SharePoint information design, Exchange Online
- Azure migrations sized workload by workload, with recovery objectives per system
- Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 decisions run as a trial of the work your team actually does
- Backup and recovery design with Datto or Veeam and a restore test in the acceptance criteria
Networks and Offices
Designed before the fit-out, not patched after opening day.
- Cisco Meraki or Fortinet designs: firewall, switching, Wi-Fi, segmentation and failover
- Office moves and build-outs specified from the floor plan for the landlord and the cabling contractor
- Multi-site connectivity with site-to-site links and zero-trust remote access
- Carrier selection and failover based on what actually reaches the building
Compliance and Advisory
The evidence, not just the policy.
- Security programs mapped to HIPAA, NYDFS Part 500, CMMC 2.0, SOC 2 or a cyber insurer's questionnaire
- IT due diligence for acquisitions, leases and vendor decisions
- CRM and ERP decisions coordinated with the vendor, from Salesforce and HubSpot to NetSuite
- Virtual CIO reviews each quarter with a roadmap, a budget and a change log
Why Businesses Choose NetSys for IT Consulting
Fifteen minutes with a NetSys engineer, not a salesperson, and you will know where your it consulting stands and what it would take to fix it. Call 845-203-3914 or request a call to discuss the scope and next steps.
- Engineers with degrees in electrical and computer engineering do the assessment and run the project
- Priced by the project or the review, never by the hour
- No hardware or software resale margin driving the recommendation
- The same engineer stays on for the quarterly reviews
- Month to month for ongoing advisory, like every NetSys agreement
IT Consulting in practice
- Real estate
Commercial property management company
SharePoint migration of 800 GB of leases, vendor records, and property documents, with separate access permissions for 12 property teams.
SharePoint & OneDrive MigrationIT for Real Estate and Property Management
- Accounting firms
Corporate accounting firm
Migration of 2 TB of business data to Azure, secure remote access for 42 employees, and backup and recovery configuration.
- Architecture and engineering
Civil engineering firm
Migration of 3 TB of project data to Azure, secure access for 55 employees, and cloud backup configuration.
Azure Cloud MigrationIT for Architecture and Engineering Firms
Client names are withheld. Each card is the scope of a real NetSys engagement, as delivered.
Five ways to engage, and how each is priced
Discovery and an assessment come first. What each engagement produces and how it is priced, without a rate card:
| Engagement | What you get | How it is priced |
|---|---|---|
| Assessment | A written review of every system, account, vendor and risk, with the most important findings ranked | A fixed price set by the size of the environment |
| Roadmap and budget | A 12-to-36-month plan with costs, sequence and dependencies | Delivered with the assessment, then kept current through virtual CIO reviews |
| Project | A named engineer, a written plan, acceptance checks per phase and a cutover outside business hours | Quoted from the workload inventory |
| Virtual CIO advisory | Quarterly reviews that keep the roadmap, budget and risk register current | A monthly figure that scales with the reviews and decisions a year, month to month |
| IT due diligence | The target's accounts, licenses, contracts, backups and security posture, with the risks that need a price before closing | Scoped to the transaction timetable |
Nothing is billed by the hour, and no hardware or software resale margin sits behind a recommendation.
Two engagements from our case studies
Client stories as published, with the clients anonymized. Neither write-up measured outcome figures for publication, so none appear here:
| Case study | Starting point | What NetSys did | Where it ended |
|---|---|---|---|
| Azure-hosted systems to Dynamics 365 Business Central | A line-of-business system on Azure virtual machines that finance and operations had outgrown | Mapped data, integrations and reports, migrated and reconciled history in stages, rebuilt integrations and cut over with a parallel check | Finance and operations on a supported, cloud-native platform, with the Azure environment retired |
| On-prem servers to Azure, OneDrive to SharePoint | Servers in the office and years of files spread across personal OneDrive accounts | Moved each workload into Azure with identity in Entra ID, designed SharePoint by function and role, then migrated the OneDrive estate | No dependence on office hardware, and files with permissions tied to roles |
IT Consulting by market
NYC Metro: New York City · Manhattan · Brooklyn · Queens
New Jersey: New Jersey
Long Island: Long Island
Pennsylvania: Philadelphia · Pittsburgh
New England: Boston
Florida (other): Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Fort Lauderdale · Boca Raton · West Palm Beach · Tampa · South Florida · Florida
Mid-Atlantic: Maryland · Washington DC · Richmond · Baltimore · Virginia
Upstate NY: Albany
National metro: Houston · Los Angeles · Seattle · San Diego · Chicago · Dallas · Charlotte · Atlanta · San Jose · Denver · Austin · San Antonio · St Louis · Sacramento · Las Vegas · Nashville · Phoenix · Cleveland · Cincinnati · Indianapolis · Irvine · Milwaukee · Raleigh · Orange County · Albuquerque · Salt Lake City · New Orleans · Portland · Minneapolis · Charleston · Greenville · Kansas City · San Francisco · Columbus · Louisville · Scottsdale · Detroit · Tulsa · Fort Worth · Omaha · Boise · Fresno · Grand Rapids · Memphis
Connecticut: Connecticut
Statewide: Texas · California · Ohio · Utah
IT Consulting FAQs
What does an IT consulting engagement cost?
Assessments carry a fixed price based on the size of the environment, projects are quoted from the workload inventory, and virtual CIO advisory is a monthly figure that scales with the number of reviews and decisions a year. Every quote is written from discovery, and terms run month to month.
How is consulting different from managed IT services?
Managed IT runs your environment every day: help desk, monitoring, security, backups. Consulting answers a question or delivers a project. Many clients use both, with consulting decisions feeding the managed roadmap, and the quarterly virtual CIO review is where the two meet.
Can you help us decide between an on-premises server and the cloud?
Yes. Each workload is sized for Azure and priced against a hardware refresh on the same basis, with recovery objectives, licensing and the cost of the building's power and cooling included. The answer is often a mix, and the roadmap says which systems move first and why.
Do you do IT due diligence for acquisitions?
Yes. We inventory the target's accounts, licenses, contracts, backups and security posture, and report the three risks that need a price before closing. Findings are in writing and scoped to the transaction timetable.
Will you work with our software vendors?
Yes. CRM, ERP, EHR and practice-management decisions are coordinated with the vendor, whether Salesforce, HubSpot, GoHighLevel, NetSuite, Epic or Clio. We handle infrastructure, identity and integration and hold the vendor to the application side.
What happens after the roadmap?
Either your team runs it, we run the projects, or we take the environment on under a managed agreement. The quarterly review keeps the roadmap and budget current whichever way you choose.
What does an IT consultant do for a small business?
An IT consultant gives a small business an engineer's view of what it runs and what to do next: an assessment, a roadmap with costs, help choosing between options such as a server refresh or the cloud, and the project work to carry out the plan. An IT consulting firm with nothing to resell can give advice that is not tied to a product.
What is strategic IT consulting?
Strategic IT consulting ties technology spending to where the business is going: a multi-year roadmap, a budget leadership can plan around, and decisions on cloud, security and major systems made with costs side by side. At NetSys it continues through quarterly virtual CIO reviews, so the plan changes when the business does.
Where do you provide IT consulting?
From one office in Brooklyn. Engineers work on site across New York City, Long Island, Westchester, the Hudson Valley, North Jersey and Fairfield County, CT. Elsewhere, consulting runs remotely, with site visits arranged in advance and scoped in the proposal. Our local IT consulting pages cover each market.
Guides on this topic
- Virtual CIO: the quarterly review that keeps the roadmap honest
- Azure migration: how workloads are sized and moved
- IT due diligence for acquisitions and leases
- Case study: on-prem servers to Azure and OneDrive to SharePoint
- The cloud migration FAQ
- What a virtual CIO does for a small business
- IT due diligence: what to check before buying a business
- IT audit: an independent review of your IT and your provider
Related services
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