IT Services For Churches In Dallas & Fort Worth

IT Services For Churches In Dallas & Fort Worth: All You Need to Secure Your Church's Network

The pandemic devastated churches — lowering the number of in-person attendance because of phased social distancing orders. Even after the government lifted many restrictions and the places of worship reopened, churches are still facing a decline in attendance numbers.

While most churches' end goal isn't to turn a profit, having an operational IT infrastructure can help places of worship deliver their services and programming to the members even remotely.

Velocity IT has worked with hundreds of churches in Dallas and Fort Worth for years and helped them with their IT. We have the experience to help you deploy technology that works for your church.

We'll offer you enabled IT services such as:

1. Customized IT Support for Church

Unlike IT solutions for the corporate world, churches need tech solutions that address the limitation of time, space, and funds. Depending on your church's needs, your IT solutions should address office technology your staff uses — be it Mac, Windows, Office 365, or Microsoft Office.

Our technologist will examine your current technology and devise solutions that address your church's goals and offer IT support such as:

• Server configuration so that they operate at peak performance
• Large wireless network roll-out, security, and maintenance to ensure they meet your church's needs
• Application development to allow effortless connection between church leaders and congregations
• Creation event management tool that allows the church to invite, register, and boost attendance
• Mobile app development that allows church leaders to create bible reading plans, fill-in-notes, media delivery, and allow the church to stay connected anytime, anywhere
• Livestream solutions for worship services to provide immersive remote worship experience and extend the reach of your church beyond the local community
• Nonprofit software pricing and discounts from the most popular vendors in the market, like Microsoft, Adobe, and Google

Regardless of the IT service you're after, Velocity IT experts can customize it to suit your church's needs.

2. A Virtual CIO for Reliable Technology and Support

Your main focus as an organization/institution should always be on your church mission and vision, meaning your IT should support you in doing so and not be another challenge you need to handle. You shouldn't be worrying about having a master plan technology and how it'll connect with your church's overall mission and vision, which is where we come in.

Our managed IT services can deploy a CIO to shoulder all the heavy strategic planning for you. The outsourced admin leverages decades of experience serving non-profits, churches, and businesses and can lay out an IT strategy for your church to follow.

The virtual CIO will ensure the key area of your church IT is covered. Such areas include:

• Cybersecurity
• Software licensing
• Staff structure
• Cloud solution
• Accounting and communication
• Linking departments

We correctly understand that your church technology will interact with different groups such as internal and external staff, software solutions, third-party vendors, and other subscribed services.

The virtual CIO that we'll deploy will take on the huge task of ensuring your IT coordinates all these bodies to support the church's mission and vision. We'll help you devise a strategic plan to coordinate all the tech input and resources to help you achieve your ministry's goals.

3. Network Infrastructure Layout

Your network infrastructure is critical for delivering church management software solutions and other ministry applications via software as a service model. Your church's network infrastructure may include:

• Firewalls
• Internet circuits
• Switches
• Routers
• Wireless access points
• Workstations
• Server

Each device has a role in your network in ensuring that critical data pass through the network and internet properly. Your network infrastructure plays a crucial role in facilitating communication and data movement in and out of your church.

To structure your church network infrastructure, our team of experts will help you design and implement the front end of your network infrastructure. We'll offer you comprehensive oversight and proactive network maintenance to ensure nothing impedes or delay your operations.

4. Hardware as a Service (HaaS)

Every IT system requires hardware to achieve its technological goals, and your church' isn't an exception.

Instead of going through the pain and expense of buying hardware, Velocity IT  has a HaaS offering that lets your church leverage hardware without buying them but instead makes a payment on a monthly basis. The Haas offering delivers:

• Equipment in your office
• Monitoring on how the devices function
• Maintenance to ensure peak performance
• Support in case you face problems with the hardware

When the time for an upgrade comes, we'll swipe all the devices during the out-of-hours period and replace them with new ones without disrupting church operations.

Since you'll not be buying the hardware, you don't need to worry about scaling. When the church adds new staff, we'll supply more devices to suit your current needs at affordable monthly rates.

Our hardware as a service offering will relieve you of the worry of ongoing investment in technology infrastructure and help you avoid periodic capital campaigns or the need to come up with an extensive budget for expensive hardware. We'll ensure you get the technology to enable your church through a budgeted and fixed expense.

More importantly, choosing our hardware as a service offering will eliminate unpredictability related to maintenance, upkeep, and warranty.

5. Managed Wireless Connection

Wireless requirements for churches are different from those of a standard office. You need a heavy-density internet service provider to provide internet for every church staff and member, irrespective of where they are within the church premises.

Initially, you'd only have to deploy a handful of wireless access points and open internet access to users to connect to the church's wireless network.

However, that isn't the case because nearly everyone has a smartphone or a tablet and would want to connect to the church's wireless network. You need to manage a reliable, high-performing wireless infrastructure.

Your heavy-density network faces the risk of data breaches, and the need for content filtering makes it difficult to manage the wireless infrastructure. Many churches today require an actively managed wireless infrastructure.

Velocity IT experts will help you plan for:

• A proper access point that considers all wall construction and layout
• Estimated usage
• Minimizing co-channel interference
• Existing network cabling plant
• Expected client density

We'll offer a wireless network different from the small office setup and instead offer you one that can accommodate several thousand congregants in your worship space. We'll consider your internet's bandwidth and content filtering requirements for your new wireless infrastructure.

6. Content Filtering

Members, attendees, and staff attending a church event expect to always connect to the church's IT resources and information. Different users expect to access different breaths of information in the church environment. However, the church has an obligation to protect people using church resources. For instance, you want to prevent guests, students, or staff from accessing inappropriate web content intentionally.

The need to allow access and protect users presents a challenge, which is a pitfall you need to avoid in the process. If they were using the church's devices, it would be easier to strike the right balance, but it's complicated because every user will be bringing their own devices.

You have the task of executing automatic content filtering without configuring or setting up individual users' devices.

Velocity IT can deploy a variety of technologies to execute the content filtering task depending on what your church should filter. Your first should first decide the content that is acceptable and content to be filtered.

We've handled hundreds of content filtering tasks for years — in a different environment and can advise you on how to execute content filtering that your church wants. Then, we'll work with you to deploy the right technology that filters content that users can't access in your network.

7. Voice Over IP Phone System (VoIP)

If your church is using the old phone system, you can consider upgrading to any of the many affordable voice-over IP phone systems for your existing network infrastructure.

For years, we've helped churches of different sizes identify and install the voice-over IP phone system that suits their specific needs. We can help you identify the most appropriate phone system for your place of worship.

We're sensitive to the non-profit nature of church operations, and our partnership with other providers allows us to offer you value without the need to pay extra for other vendors.

Our VoIP system will offer you enterprise-class features that are readily accessible and easy to use from:

• Smartphone app
• Web interphase
• Desk handset

We can help you utilize the VoIP option on Microsoft Teams Phone System. The tool in the Microsoft Teams app will allow your church to communicate within the church premises and with anyone else in the world using traditional phone calls.

Microsoft has configured the system such that you can use it as a traditional phone call, but with greater flexibility in a mobile app that works everywhere, you can access the internet. The Microsoft Teams software offers you the option to use VoIP as an internal and external phone system.

Our team will help your church utilize the VoIP option to its fullest capacity.

Velocity IT Will offer Your Church Place of Worship IT Services

For over ten years, we've offered technical support to hundreds of churches and other places of worship in the Dallas and Fort Worth metro areas, and we can help you too. The churches we've helped have unlimited access to a fully staffed helpdesk 24/7/365, getting support for managed IT services we offer.

Contact us today for help with your church's IT requirements.