Prepared for Erik and Alexis · following our conversation, September 3, 2026
Eight people, a growing book, a new office in January, and IT that's been handled by whoever had a minute. It's worked. You told us it's getting harder every time someone new starts. Here's how we'd take that off your plate without the scare tactics, keep the Google setup you like, and exactly what it costs.
Ybor City ↔ Rocky Point: fifteen minutes across town, and engineers who show up
From our conversation
First, credit where it's due: you've run a firm with a serious book on IT you figured out yourselves, between Erik, the traders, and your computer guy. Google Workspace for mail and Drive, Zoom Phone, HubSpot, MFA already on email, and a team that reaches for Gemini before it reaches for a helpdesk. Those are good instincts, and we're not here to undo any of them.
You said it plainly: you want a partner who understands what you have, makes sure it's working, and helps it evolve. Not a vendor with a list of a million things you're doing wrong. Here's what's actually in the way:
When something breaks, the team puts its heads together and figures it out. That's worked for years. It stops working the morning a new hire needs a laptop, a login, and a Gator email, and the person who knows how is in Connecticut on a client call.
Google Workspace for email and Drive, Microsoft only for Excel and Word. You're committed to it, and it works. Some of the firms you talked to wanted to change that first. We don't. We support Workspace for other clients today, and a Mac at the front desk doesn't bother us either.
Personal Microsoft accounts or business ones? Which version of Windows? Is the antivirus actually running everywhere? Alexis's word was standardization, and she's right. Nobody should have to remember the answer. It should be written down and checked by something that never forgets.
Erik doesn't want everyone carrying a corporate second phone, and he's right that it changes the culture of a small, responsive team. The real need is narrower: work email and files on a personal phone that can be wiped when someone leaves, without touching their photos. That's a solved problem.
Today you order the computer and set it up yourselves. When someone leaves, you'd like to shut it off remotely and log them out of everything at once. Both of those become a runbook: the same steps every time, done by us, with nothing left licensed or lingering.
Derek has machines in Tampa, at home, in New York, and a laptop in between. He's the most exposed person at the firm and the one who most needs a number to call at 7 AM from a hotel. Right now that number is Erik.
The handoff
Erik asked for the honest version of how this goes. Here it is. Our first job isn't to change anything. It's to understand what you have, tell you what's fine, and put a written standard behind it. Then your team calls us instead of each other, and Erik goes back to his actual job.
Every Mac and PC, the Google Workspace admin console, the Microsoft licensing, the firewall your last provider picked, the Zoom setup, and how the India analyst and your compliance team connect. Nothing gets replaced because it isn't ours. If it works, it stays.
A short document, in plain English, that says what a Gator computer looks like, what a Gator phone looks like, what happens on someone's first day and last day, and how Workspace is locked down. You approve it before it's enforced. Then it's checked automatically, forever.
From day one, your team calls us, not Erik. Laptop won't connect, "is this email real?", Derek can't get on the hotel Wi-Fi, a new hire starts Monday. You stay in the loop on strategy and decisions. You leave the tickets behind.
Quick wins, fast
Onboarding isn't paperwork season. These are the things we start in week one, most of them things you told us about on Thursday.
After the handoff
Erik asked what the service levels are. This is the answer, by the three things you're paying for.
January, done once
You said it yourself: you don't want to build out 3,000 square feet and then have someone come in later to fix the infrastructure. Agreed. A simple rule separates what's on this list from what isn't: getting what you already own working right is onboarding, not a project. Projects are the real builds. Each one is quoted in writing after we've walked the space, and approved by you before any work begins.
You've been on Wi-Fi and it's fine. It'll stay that way: business-grade access points placed from a survey of the new floor plan, not guessed. We pull drops only where they matter, the printer, the conference room screen, the postage machine, and we test the 2010 cabling in the space you're taking over before assuming any of it needs replacing.
Your PM was right after the Spectrum outage. Frontier almost certainly has a circuit in the Point building. We bring in the second provider and put both behind a firewall that fails over automatically. If the one you have can do it, we keep it. If it can't, we tell you what the right one costs before you buy anything.
Design in October and November, while you're still meeting with the contractor. Outlets and pathways coordinated with them, since most build-out contractors won't touch the cabling anyway. Install and cutover before you move in. You walk into the new space with the network already working.
Google Workspace backup, so a deleted mailbox or Drive folder can come back months later. Email encryption for the client conversations that need it, which is mostly a Workspace setting we turn on. A second set of hands on what your analyst is building with Claude. None of these are required to start. Each is priced on its own.
The numbers
Per person, per month. Not per incident, not per hour, not "we'll see." When you hire, the number grows with you. When someone leaves, it drops. You don't have a server, so there's no server line. It's that simple.
One thing worth saying plainly, since you told us you won't be calling much: the number isn't a call budget. It pays for the standard, the monitoring on every machine, the security stack, the first-day and last-day runbooks, and the documentation your insurer and your compliance team will ask for. A quiet phone is the point. You're paying for things not to break, and for someone to own it when they do.
Your outsourced compliance team has no Gator accounts, so they aren't a seat · the India analyst is the one light user today · Google Workspace and Microsoft licensing stay billed as they are, or consolidate onto our invoice, your call · no server, no server line
Onboarding: agents on every machine, the Workspace and Microsoft reviews, the firewall assessment, the device baseline, the one-phone policy, the first-day and last-day runbooks, the Zoom main-line move, and the written standard with your roadmap.
Making your current setup right is part of starting, not an extra. If it's already yours and it just needs to be configured properly, that happens here.
The office build-out, Workspace backup, encryption beyond the built-in setting, and any AI work: scoped and quoted individually, most of it after the 30-day assessment and the site walk, and approved by you before work begins. No project starts without a number you've seen.
Why us, and what happens next
But what actually matters is this. We're a Tampa managed-IT firm, twenty-five years in, in the same Ybor City office for twenty of them. We're big enough to staff a real helpdesk and a real security practice, and small enough that you're a name here, not an account number. Some of our longest-standing clients came to us at your size and grew to a hundred times it. We didn't get in their way, and we'd like the chance not to get in yours. When you call, a person you know answers. When we say a number, it's the number.
Read this with Derek and whoever else needs to weigh in, then let's walk through it together: the plan, the numbers, and the hard questions. That's how we like to do it, so nothing gets miscommunicated. Then you decide, on your timeline. If the answer's no, you'll still leave with a clearer picture of your own systems than you had before.
Josh Easters and Dave Work, Diversicom
