Question 1

What is Aligned Technology Partners?

Accepted Answer

Aligned Technology Partners is a managed IT services and strategic technology consulting firm headquartered in Roanoke, Texas, serving businesses across the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. We have been doing this work since 2001 and support over 100 businesses across the region. Most of what we do falls into three areas. We protect the business by reducing risk and securing every layer from endpoint to cloud. We optimize by removing friction from the systems people use every day. And we advance by helping leadership make technology decisions that support where the business is going, not just what broke last week.

Question 2

Is Aligned Technology Partners the same company as On-Site PC Services?

Accepted Answer

Yes. On-Site PC Services became Aligned Technology Partners in May 2026. Same company, same ownership, same team, same phone number. The name changed because the work changed. For most of our history the name described what we did, which was show up and fix computers. That is still part of it, but the larger value we deliver now is alignment between people, process, and technology. If you have an existing agreement, invoice, or support history with On-Site PC Services, all of it carries forward. Nothing about your service changed on the day the sign did.

Question 3

Where are you located and what areas do you serve?

Accepted Answer

Our office is at 1415 Cannon Pkwy, Suite 120, Roanoke, Texas 76262, just off the Alliance corridor between Fort Worth and Denton. We support organizations across the DFW metroplex, including Fort Worth, Dallas, Arlington, Plano, Irving, Richardson, Denton, Lewisville, Flower Mound, Grapevine, Southlake, Colleyville, Keller, Coppell, Trophy Club, Westlake, Argyle, Justin, Haslet, Prosper, North Richland Hills, and Roanoke. Most support is delivered remotely, which is faster for the majority of issues. When a problem genuinely requires someone standing in front of the equipment, we come out.

Question 4

How long have you been in business?

Accepted Answer

Since 2001. That is more than two decades supporting businesses in this specific market, through several generations of technology and a few recessions. Longevity matters in this industry more than it might appear. IT providers come and go, and continuity has real value when the people supporting your systems already know their history. We are still here, still working with clients who started with us in the early years.

Question 5

What size businesses do you work with?

Accepted Answer

Our clients typically run between 10 and 400 workstations. That range covers a lot of ground, from a single-location dental practice to a construction firm with field crews across several counties. The common thread is not headcount. It is that the business has grown past the point where technology can be handled informally, but has not grown to where a full internal IT department makes financial sense. That gap is where we do our best work.

Question 6

What industries do you specialize in?

Accepted Answer

We have the deepest experience in two areas. Skilled trades, including HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and construction. These businesses live or die on dispatch, scheduling, and field connectivity. When the system that routes jobs goes down, crews sit idle and revenue stops. We design around that reality, including peak-season load and equipment that has to survive dust, metal, and truck traffic. Healthcare, including medical practices, dental offices, and clinics. Uptime here is tied directly to patient care. We work with EHR platforms, practice management systems, connected medical devices that can never be patched, and the HIPAA obligations that sit underneath all of it. We also serve law firms, financial services, and manufacturing.

Question 7

What does Protect, Optimize, Advance mean?

Accepted Answer

It is how we organize everything we do. Protect covers security and resilience. Layered defenses, tested backups, and documented controls, so that leadership can answer hard questions about risk with evidence instead of assumption. Optimize covers the systems and support that keep daily work reliable. Fast help desk response, proactive maintenance, and workflows that stop creating friction for the people using them. Advance covers strategy and leadership. Multi-year roadmaps, budget planning, and investment decisions shaped by business goals rather than whichever vendor called most recently. Most engagements touch all three, though rarely in equal measure at the start.

Question 8

How do we get started?

Accepted Answer

The first step is a conversation, not a sales presentation. We want to understand your business first. Where technology is creating friction. Where risk is quietly increasing. Where growth may be exposing weaknesses in the current environment. That conversation usually takes 30 to 45 minutes and there is no cost or obligation attached to it. If it makes sense to keep going, the next step is an assessment of your current environment. You get a clear picture of your risks and priorities before you commit to anything. Call 817-306-6106 or email support@alignedtechpartners.com to set it up.

Question 9

What happens during the assessment?

Accepted Answer

We look at what you actually have, not what the documentation says you have. That means workstations, servers, network equipment, backup systems, security layers, licensing, and how data moves through the business. We pay particular attention to what would stop the business if it failed. Every organization has a handful of systems that everything else depends on, and those are rarely the ones getting the most attention. You receive a clear picture of where things stand and what we would prioritize, so the decision about what to do next is an informed one.

Question 10

How long does onboarding take?

Accepted Answer

Most environments in our client size range are fully onboarded within 30 to 60 days, though you see meaningful improvement well before that. The first two weeks focus on visibility and stability: getting monitoring in place, closing obvious security gaps, and confirming that backups actually work. After that we move into documentation, standardization, and the longer items that came out of the assessment. We sequence the work so that nothing disruptive happens during your busy season. For an HVAC company that means not touching dispatch in July.

Question 11

We already have IT support. How is this different?

Accepted Answer

Having support in place is not the same as having alignment. Plenty of organizations with existing IT still deal with recurring inefficiency, disconnected systems, security gaps nobody owns, and leadership distraction that never appears on an invoice. The question is not whether someone is answering the phone. It is whether technology is actively moving the business forward or quietly holding it back. The honest test: does your current provider bring you a plan, or do they wait for you to bring them a problem?

Question 12

Can you work alongside our internal IT person or team?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and it is a common arrangement. It is usually called co-managed IT. Internal IT staff know your business, your people, and your history in a way no outside provider can match. What they often lack is depth across every specialty, 24/7 coverage, enterprise-grade security tooling, and someone to hand the after-hours pager to. We fill those gaps rather than replace anyone. In practice that often means we take monitoring, security operations, patching, and escalation, while your internal person stays focused on the applications and relationships that require internal knowledge.

Question 13

What if we are unhappy with the relationship?

Accepted Answer

Then we want to know early, while it is still fixable. We hold regular account reviews specifically so that small frustrations surface before they become reasons to leave. If something is not working, tell us and we will address it directly. Most of the relationships that go sideways in this industry do so quietly, over months, while nobody says anything. We would rather have the uncomfortable conversation early and fix the problem than lose a client we could have kept.

Question 14

What is managed IT and what is included?

Accepted Answer

Managed IT means we take ongoing responsibility for keeping your technology healthy, rather than waiting for you to call when it breaks. In practice that includes proactive 24/7 monitoring across workstations, servers, and network devices, scheduled patching, at least three layers of security, daily backups with automated restore testing, help desk support for your employees, vendor coordination, and strategic account management. The distinction that matters most is ownership. Under a managed agreement, the health of your environment is our responsibility, not a series of individual requests you have to remember to make.

Question 15

How is managed IT different from break-fix?

Accepted Answer

Break-fix waits for something to fail, then bills you to repair it. The incentives point in the wrong direction, because the provider earns more when more things break. Managed IT prevents issues before they reach your team through continuous monitoring and scheduled maintenance. The cost is predictable, and the incentive is aligned, because a stable environment is better for both sides. The larger difference is the drag that never shows up on an invoice. Employees working around a slow system, a manager spending an afternoon chasing a vendor, a crew idle because dispatch is down. Break-fix does not measure any of it. Managed IT is designed to eliminate it.

Question 16

What are your support hours?

Accepted Answer

Our office is staffed Monday through Friday from 7:30 AM to 7:00 PM Central, and Saturday and Sunday from 7:30 AM to 5:00 PM Central. The weekend coverage is deliberate. Trades businesses run Saturday crews and medical practices hold weekend hours, and a business that operates on the weekend needs support on the weekend. For clients who need true around-the-clock coverage, our operations team is staffed 24/7 with contractual commitments to both response and resolution time.

Question 17

How quickly do you respond when something breaks?

Accepted Answer

If you call, under one minute. Your call goes directly to a technician, not to a dispatcher who takes a message and passes it along. There is no triage layer between you and the person who can actually fix the problem. Across all channels, including email and portal tickets, our average time to first response is just under 13 minutes. Response is only half the picture though, because a fast acknowledgment that leads to a three-day wait is not support. So we measure completion as well. We resolve 84 percent of all tickets the same day they come in, and the average same-day resolution takes 28 minutes. These are live operational numbers from our service desk, not targets we aspire to. Clients who need contractual commitments get service level agreements covering both response and resolution time.

Question 18

Why does calling get a technician instead of a dispatcher?

Accepted Answer

Because the handoff is where time gets lost. The standard model in this industry routes calls to a dispatcher who records the issue, categorizes it, and queues it for someone else. The caller explains the problem once to a person who cannot solve it, then again later to a person who can. Every step adds delay, and details get flattened in translation. We staff so that the person answering can start working. It costs more to run and it is the single biggest reason our first response averages under one minute on the phone.

Question 19

How do employees request help?

Accepted Answer

Whatever way is fastest for them. Phone, email, or a support request from their desktop. We deliberately do not force everyone through a single rigid channel. A technician standing on a roof with a tablet that will not connect is not going to fill out a web form, and a front-desk employee with a waiting room full of patients does not have time to describe the problem in writing. Every request lands in the same system regardless of how it arrives, so nothing gets lost and history stays in one place.

Question 20

Do you handle our vendors too?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Internet providers, line-of-business software companies, phone carriers, equipment manufacturers, and the rest. This is one of the most underrated parts of the service. Vendor coordination consumes an enormous amount of management time, and it is almost never the highest use of an owner's or office manager's day. When your practice management software stops talking to your imaging system, you should be able to hand that to us and go back to work.

Question 21

Is my business really a target for cyberattacks?

Accepted Answer

Yes, and the assumption that you are too small to be worth attacking is exactly what makes smaller businesses attractive. Most attacks are not personal. They are automated, scanning broadly for known weaknesses and taking whatever they find. A 30-person plumbing company with an unpatched firewall is an easier target than a bank, and the attacker does not need to have heard of you. Healthcare is the most targeted sector and carries the highest average breach cost of any industry. Trades businesses are increasingly hit through ransomware and phishing, often specifically because attackers expect limited defenses.

Question 22

Isn't antivirus enough?

Accepted Answer

It has not been for a long time. Traditional antivirus addresses only a fraction of current threats, because most successful attacks do not involve a virus file at all. They involve a stolen password, a convincing email, or an employee who did exactly what the message told them to do. Protection has to be layered to your actual risk. Multi-factor authentication alone prevents an estimated 99 percent of credential-based breaches before they ever reach your systems, and it is one of the least expensive controls available.

Question 23

What does your cybersecurity actually include?

Accepted Answer

Layered, proactive protection where each layer closes a different kind of gap. That includes multi-factor authentication, behavioral threat detection, endpoint detection and response with real human intervention rather than alerts nobody reads, email defenses, dark web monitoring for exposed credentials, security awareness training, and phishing simulations that show you where the actual risk sits in your organization. We also validate the defenses through penetration testing, approaching the environment the way an attacker would rather than assuming the configuration works because it was configured.

Question 24

How do I know what we are actually exposed to?

Accepted Answer

That is what an assessment is for. We map how your data moves and where your real attack surfaces are, then test the defenses rather than take them on faith. The goal is a security posture that leadership can stand behind under hard questions, whether those questions come from a client, an insurer, an auditor, or a board. Documented, tested controls instead of assumption. Most organizations we assess are not unprotected. They are under-protected in ways nobody in leadership can see.

Question 25

Can you help us meet compliance requirements?

Accepted Answer

Yes. We work regularly with HIPAA in healthcare settings, and with the security requirements that show up in client contracts, cyber insurance applications, and industry frameworks including NIST CSF and CIS Controls. Our approach is to treat compliance as an ongoing operating standard rather than something reconstructed in a panic when an audit or a questionnaire arrives. The organizations that struggle with compliance are almost always the ones treating it as an event instead of a practice.

Question 26

What is a vCIO and does my business need one?

Accepted Answer

A virtual CIO is fractional, strategic technology leadership. Someone who sits at the planning table, builds the multi-year roadmap, and evaluates technology investments through a business lens, without the cost of a full-time executive. The clearest sign that you need one: your major technology decisions are being driven by whichever vendor sent the most recent proposal, or by whoever in the room is loudest about it, and leadership ends up accountable for outcomes that were never shaped by a clear business rationale. Support keeps systems running. A vCIO shapes where technology is going.

Question 27

How does a vCIO engagement work?

Accepted Answer

Three models, depending on what the business needs. Strategic advisory is included for ongoing managed clients, covering regular planning reviews, budget guidance, and roadmap maintenance. A dedicated fractional partnership commits a set number of monthly hours for organizations that need deeper and more consistent involvement. Project-based executive leadership covers a specific major initiative, such as an acquisition, a facility move, a platform migration, or a compliance program.

Question 28

What does a technology roadmap actually look like?

Accepted Answer

It is a multi-year plan tying technology decisions to business outcomes, with three parts that most plans are missing. First, a clear inventory of what you have and when each piece reaches end of life. Second, priorities ranked by business impact rather than by what is newest. Third, a budget forecast so that major expenses are planned instead of arriving as emergencies. The practical value is that it removes surprise. When the server needs replacing, that was on the plan 18 months ago and the money was set aside for it.

Question 29

What happens if our systems go down or we get hit with ransomware?

Accepted Answer

The honest answer depends entirely on preparation done beforehand. Every client environment runs daily backups with automated restore testing, which is the part most organizations skip. Having a backup and having a proven recovery are different things, and the difference only becomes visible on the worst day. We design recovery architecture around what the business actually needs to keep running, not around what is easiest to back up. For a medical practice that means scheduling and charting come back first. For a trades business it means dispatch. Those priorities are established in advance and documented, so nobody is making decisions under pressure.

Question 30

Do you actually test backups?

Accepted Answer

Yes, automatically and continuously. Most organizations have a backup. Far fewer have tested it. The failure mode we see most often is a business that has been backing up faithfully for years and discovers during an actual incident that the restore does not work, or takes four days, or is missing the one system that mattered. Automated restore testing means recovery is proven rather than assumed. It is one of the least glamorous things we do and one of the most important.

Question 31

Is a long-term contract required?

Accepted Answer

We build agreements around the engagement rather than around locking you in. The length depends on what the work involves, and we would rather earn the relationship month to month than trap anyone in a term they regret. What we care about is that the commitment on both sides matches the outcome you are after. Some work, like a security program or a multi-year roadmap, only makes sense with continuity behind it. Other engagements can start smaller. We will be direct about which is which before anything is signed.

Question 32

How is your pricing structured?

Accepted Answer

Agreements are built around the environment and the outcomes the business needs, and the monthly cost is predictable rather than variable. We do not publish a single rate, because a 12-person dental practice and a 200-employee construction firm with four locations do not have the same requirements, and quoting either one from a price sheet would do them a disservice. The scope comes out of the assessment. What we can tell you is what the model gives you: a full IT support structure, help desk, security, strategic planning, maintenance, and recovery, for a fraction of the cost of hiring one internal IT employee.

Question 33

How does the cost compare to what we are doing now?

Accepted Answer

The cost of misalignment is usually far greater than the price of better technology leadership. Wasted employee time, recurring disruptions, security exposure, emergency repairs that were preventable, and stalled growth all carry real cost. They just do not appear as a line item anywhere, which is why they so often go unexamined. The organizations that get the most value from this relationship are the ones that stop asking what IT support costs and start asking what the current situation is costing them. That number is frequently larger and considerably less predictable.

Question 34

What is the first thing we should do?

Accepted Answer

Call 817-306-6106 or email support@alignedtechpartners.com and ask for a conversation. Not a demo, not a proposal. A conversation about what is not working, what you are worried about, and what you are trying to build. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit, and if we are not, we will usually be able to point you toward someone who is. What business problem can we help you solve?

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions? Start a conversation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Still have questions? Start a conversation.