Keeping up with technology doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a techie, suggested Gary Whear of aNetworks in his presentation "The True Costs of IT Ownership" to a crowd at the Firm Future conference in Boston.

The Ps&Qs of IT are really total costs of ownerships – or TCOs, Whear said. Such costs can vary from firm to firm depending on size and needs. Setting benchmarks to judge how efficiently your tech is meeting your needs doesn’t necessarily require small firm owners and managers to have tech backgrounds. Just as variety of car repair services can be had from your own dealer, the corner garage or Jiffy Lube, IT services are also available from a myriad of third party and industry providers, with firms with fewer than 25 employees often able to more efficiently serve their IT needs though outsourced, rather than in-house solutions. Even solo practitioners don’t necessary have to get their hands greasy and go under their desktop’s hood.

Still, even small firms face risks, especially as more and more users are working from multiple computers, tablets, and smart phones. That creates a "huge amount of exposure and risk" and even though you want to stay mobile, you have to lock that data down.

Many smaller firms may not realize that with the speed in the development of technology, replacing outdated tech often pays for itself in the form of energy efficiency. "Even a three-year old laptop often uses two to three times the power" of today’s models, and the same is often true for larger IT infrastructure like servers.