Managed IT that grows with Forsyth County
Support, security, Microsoft 365 and backup for Cumming businesses with roughly 10 to 150 people. One team takes care of all of it, at a fixed monthly price, from just down GA-400 in Alpharetta.
- A help desk that answers by phone, email or portal
- Every PC and server watched and patched
- Backups restored on a schedule to prove they work
- Engineers on site in Cumming when remote fixes won't do
Managed IT, broken into four parts
Most Cumming clients bundle all four. If you only need one piece, such as backup or security, that works too.
IT Support & Help Desk
A help desk your team can reach, devices monitored and patched, and an engineer on site in Cumming when it's needed.
What support includesCybersecurity
MFA, email screening, endpoint detection and staff training, with alerts watched by people who act on them.
Our security layersMicrosoft 365 & Cloud
A secure Microsoft 365 tenant with Teams, SharePoint and Intune configured, and a plan to retire the aging closet server.
Microsoft 365 servicesBackup & Disaster Recovery
Protected copies of your servers, PCs and Microsoft 365, a person reviewing the results daily and a written plan for storms, ransomware and dead hardware.
How recovery worksA fast-growing county full of small and mid-size employers
Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau describing the county where our Cumming clients do business.
Growing fast in Forsyth County, with IT lagging behind
Few of the owners we meet ever designed their IT. It piled up as the company grew.
The office manager is also IT
Password resets, new laptops and calls to the internet company fall to whoever is nearest. That's fine until a real outage hits on the day they're out.
Headcount doubled, setup didn't change
You went from a dozen people to forty, maybe added a second office or field crews, but the Wi-Fi, the shared logins and the closet server are the same ones you started with.
The backup is a guess
Something runs every night. Nobody has restored a file from it in years, and no one knows if it covers email, laptops or the accounting system.
Your current IT help is slow
Tickets wait days, visits are rare and invoices list hours nobody can explain. People have quietly stopped asking for help.
What Forsyth County's growth means for your technology
Forsyth County keeps filling in. The Census Bureau estimated 280,096 residents on July 1, 2024, about 11.5 percent more than its 2020 base. Drive GA-400 from McGinnis Ferry Road to Coal Mountain and you can see where that growth went: new subdivisions, medical offices, warehouses and shopping centers where there were pastures not long ago.
Businesses followed the rooftops. The Census Bureau's 2023 County Business Patterns counts 8,253 Forsyth County establishments with a payroll, employing about 87,000 people. Roughly 6,500 of them have fewer than ten workers. The 1,725 that employ between 10 and 249 people are the ones we hear from most. They are big enough that a lost day costs real money, and usually still too small to hire a full IT staff.
Who is doing business here
The single largest group is professional, scientific and technical services: 1,973 firms, close to one in four local employers. That covers CPAs, engineers, consultants, software shops, architects and attorneys, many of them in office parks along Peachtree Parkway or in suites near downtown Cumming. Most live inside Microsoft 365, a line-of-business app and a few cloud tools, and their biggest risk is a stolen login rather than a broken server.
Health care is a close second by headcount, with about 12,000 workers across 782 establishments. Northside Hospital Forsyth anchors a campus of medical office buildings just off GA-400 in Cumming, and the county has 209 physician offices and 117 dental offices on top of that. Each one handles patient records under HIPAA and depends on imaging, scheduling and e-prescribing systems that can't sit idle.
Construction counts 862 establishments and about 9,500 jobs, which makes sense in a county still building out. Builders, framers, electricians, HVAC and landscaping firms run crews from trucks, bid jobs from tablets and send large payments to suppliers. Manufacturing is smaller by count, 223 sites, but employs about 8,500 people. Industrial space keeps going up: the Shiloh 400 Business Center off McFarland Road in the south end, the Forsyth Commerce Center near GA-9 and GA-141, and the Coal Mountain Industrial Park off Settingdown Road in the north. Food processing and commercial printing are two of the larger manufacturing groups by employment, and both run plant-floor computers that need careful handling.
Two Cummings, really
ZIP codes 30040 and 30041 hold about 4,800 of those establishments between them. That is the busy part of the county, with good wired internet along the main roads. ZIP 30028, the northern end toward Dawson and Lumpkin counties, has about 500. Offices there, and some near Lake Lanier, can have fewer internet providers to choose from and more trees between them and the nearest power line. Power across the county comes from Sawnee EMC, which is based in Cumming, or Georgia Power, depending on the address.
A GA-400 workforce
Census figures put the average commute for Forsyth County workers at 30.6 minutes. Many people drive south toward Alpharetta, Perimeter and Midtown, and many local employers recruit from Dawson, Hall and north Fulton. Hybrid work is common. So the network in your office matters less than it used to, and the laptops, accounts and cloud services your people use from home matter more.
What this means for IT
A fast-growing business tends to add people faster than it adds process. New hires get the old laptop and a shared password. A second location gets a router from the big-box store. Nobody owns the job of removing accounts when people leave. None of that is unusual, and all of it is fixable with an honest inventory, a short list of priorities and someone accountable for upkeep every month.
Cumming and the rest of Forsyth County
We drive up GA-400 from Alpharetta. Halcyon and South Forsyth are the first stops past McGinnis Ferry Road, The Collection at Forsyth sits off Peachtree Parkway, and downtown Cumming is a few minutes beyond. Vickery and Midway are on the west side off Post Road, with Coal Mountain and the Lake Lanier side to the north and east. Most issues are solved remotely the same day. When hands are needed, we schedule a visit and group trips by area.
- Cumming
- South Forsyth
- The Collection at Forsyth
- Vickery
- Halcyon
- GA-400 corridor
- Lake Lanier area
- Coal Mountain
- Big Creek
- Midway
How Forsyth County companies tend to handle IT
Most growing firms try the first two options before they call us. Both hold up for a while and then break down as headcount climbs.
| Handle it in-house | Call a tech when it breaks | Sentry Cloud IT | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who fixes it | Whoever is least busy | A solo tech, if free | A help desk with your systems documented |
| Updates | Whenever someone gets to it | Only during a billed visit | Scheduled, tracked and reported monthly |
| Protection | Basic antivirus | Whatever was installed last time | MFA, email filtering and endpoint detection, watched daily |
| Backups | Never tested | Installed once, then forgotten | Checked every business day and test-restored |
| Spending | Buried in lost time | Hourly and unpredictable | One fixed monthly amount |
| Looking ahead | No plan | No plan | Quarterly meetings and an annual IT budget |
How a Cumming business comes on board
A company with 10 to 75 people is typically fully onboarded in three to six weeks. The more cleanup needed, the closer to six.
Review
An engineer visits, looks at your devices, network, Microsoft 365 and backups, and talks with the people who rely on them.
Propose
You get the findings ranked by risk, a fixed monthly quote and a start date that avoids your busiest stretch.
Transition
We collect credentials and records from the outgoing provider, install monitoring, fix urgent items and show staff how to reach us.
Support
Daily help desk, patching and security and backup checks, with a review meeting every quarter.
What Cumming owners want to know first
Do you have a Cumming location?
No. We're based in Alpharetta, a short trip down GA-400. Engineers come to Cumming and the rest of Forsyth County for planned and urgent visits, and most requests are fixed remotely.
Which businesses are a good fit?
Usually companies with about 10 to 150 staff. Smaller offices that handle sensitive data, such as medical, dental, accounting or legal practices, are also a good match.
How do you price managed IT?
We look at your setup first, then quote a flat monthly rate tied to people, machines and scope. Routine help is part of that rate, so nobody hesitates to call.
Can you replace our current IT company?
Yes. We manage the changeover, gathering admin access, licenses and records, and work with the outgoing provider so your staff barely notice the switch.
Know where your IT stands before it fails
A review shows the real state of your backups, security and support, written so an owner can act on it. Plan on about an hour of your time. The report is yours to keep either way.