There are times when your existing support team are either over burdened with work, are taking a holiday, or are in need of simply some mentoring by someone more experienced.

We are able to quickly enter an organisation and provide support on both standard applications and infrastructure and also bespoke applications and systems we have not seen before (albeit a little slower initially!)

We are therefore able to either take the pressure off your existing team or cover a short term absence as necessary.  Where applicable, we can mentor your existing team and pass off our experience, hints and tips onto them and guide them in both their career progression and their approach and quality of work.

We frequently enter organisations where the existing support team is constantly fire fighting, yet there seems to be endless problems which never seem to be fully resolved which adversely affect the running of the business.

We are able to quickly join the team and ascertain the problem areas.  Whilst solutions vary, they may consist of:

• solving the root causes of the issues rather than just the issues that show themselves
• implementing simple processes to log / resolve calls
• identify any systems that are causing business issues and recommend solutions to negate their impact
• implement user friendly self-help systems for basic tasks
• identify training requirements (for either end users or support team)
• automating time consuming and boring manual tasks

In our view, backups, recovery, and disaster recovery are one of the key and most critical IT functions around; and Business Continuity should be one of the management teams' top priorities. 

All too common are businesses that leave backups to their IT team or even a non technical user, who may well assume everything works and as such leave backups untested.  When a restore is needed, it is often not assured if it is possible or even how to do it.  In the event of server failure many businesses do not have any contingency nor any idea how they may get things working again.

We can assist in many ways:-

• Simple audit of backup strategy
• Recommendation of backup strategy, systems, hardware and software as required.  We can also set up the new systems, prove their functionally and document procedures accordingly
• Assist rebuilding servers and data recovery in the event of requiring an untested disaster recovery restore
• Automate and proactively check backup logs - preventing humans from forgetting
• Working with your IT team to define policies and procedures around backups
• Writing and testing technical disaster recovery plans, proving entire system restores are possible
• Working with you and a third party "disaster recovery site" provider to set up and prove full system recovery externally to your site Provide details and accurate easy-to-follow documentation should it be required
• Work with your management team to ensure your Business Continuity Plan is complete and has the correct procedures and controls in place

In addition, we can work with you to configure your systems and make recommendations to minimise the need to actually perform full restores - such as setting up online shadow backups; backup disk-->disk-->tape; RAID volumes etc.

Many companies' Internet IT systems have simply been installed and had additions appended over time without much planning.  As companies grow and perhaps the original IT staff leave, it becomes essential to understand what IT systems you have, what they do, and which are actually needed.  Some systems could be consolidated; some systems seemed as non-critical at implementation may now by absolutely critical - but the IT infrastructure has never been updated to reflect this.

We are able to work with your management or IT team and understand what you require from your IT systems, and understand what your business requires.  We are then able to technically audit your IT systems and analyse where you do or may have problems, such as:-

• Ensure your critical systems are on appropriate hardware for your needs (resilience; maintenance; reliability)
• Ensure your backups are appropriate to meet your business needs
• Ensure you have sufficient capacity going forward
• Analyse performance bottle necks and make appropriate recommendations
• Audit security for key systems and files, and highlight any discrepancies to management requirements
• Audit the implementation of any existing management controls or processes

Or quite simply, ensure your IT systems are actually working as efficiently as you require for your business to function as you expect.

There are times where your existing infrastructure needs upgrading.  We are NOT resellers (as there is no way a small company can compete with mainstream box shifters), but we can analyse and recommend specific and necessary upgrades you require. 

This may be for your networking infrastructure, firewall, computers, servers or even the operating systems and applications you are running.

We are able to work with you, or work alone, to upgrade any of these systems as appropriate.  We are able to work out of hours as necessary to minimise your business downtime as well as work efficiently and to a high quality to ensure any downtime is kept to a minimum.

For instance, we have upgraded NT4 domains to 2003 AD; Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003; Exchange 2003 to 2007 all without any end user downtime including minimal out of hours work.  To achieve this quality, we ensure there is adequate planning, testing, and a documented process for the actual implementation.  For smaller companies however, it is much cheaper and quicker to perform upgrades off-line (e.g. at weekend) rather than allow continuous access for the user community.  We are capable of either depending on the project, business requirements, and budget.

When making other upgrades, for instance hardware upgrades of file servers, we are experienced in performing quality cloning ensuing the migration goes un-noticed to both users and the rest of the IT infrastructure.  Similarly, with operating system upgrades we can perform both in-situ upgrades and also migrating onto clean installed systems whilst retaining all the existing shares, printers, security etc preventing a huge amount of later work.

As most IT departments have evolved, they have done so due to the environment and company demands - as well as the personalities of the IT team and the management team.

There are times where the quality of results from the IT team are therefore quite poor and the expectations of management are unable to be met.

We are able to determine the management teams requirements (or otherwise recommend), and determine a set of IT policies and procedures appropriate for your organisation. 

These can include both IT technical standards (e.g. hardware, applications); naming standards (e.g. John.Smith rather than jsmith or john etc); procedures for routine IT tasks to ensure the same repeatable quality (e.g. new user provisioning); and also end user policies (internet and eMail access etc)

Any good project manager can manage projects,  but there are times where a technical IT project manager is required in order to manage a technical IT project.  This can be due to needing to know the intricacies of infrastructure dependencies, needing to assess the results from the project team for accuracy and issues, or simply to allow the project manager to manage the overall project without having to think about the IT details.

We are experienced in running technical projects; infrastructure upgrades; building redesign; office relocation etc - in both small and medium scale - and in some cases both formally managing  and being a technical asset to the project.

We are experienced in and able to offer assistance in office relocations, building moves, and also office expansion and reduction. We are able to become a key team member to large office relocation projects ensuring all IT requirements are addressed as simply and as early as possible and allow the remaining members to maintain their focus on their areas of specialty.

We are able to liaise with suppliers to ensure their appropriate actions to help with office moves and to develop simple yet detailed plans.

If necessary, we are able to help specify network links, cabling, power and security requirements, and help design your new infrastructure for your current needs and an appropriate future forecast.

During the actual moves, we are able to work with your teams to ensure minimal downtime and to ensure all IT infrastructure is decommissioned and re-commissioned correctly and appropriate technical checklists are utilised to negate issues.

If you have an existing IT manager, either technical hands on or simply a team manager, then they may be a critical part of your organisation.  Should they leave, be off work for any reason, your whole business may be at risk.

We can offer a support service at either a technical IT management level or simply at IT "team leader" level to fill this gap and to ensure business continuity.  Depending on the complexity of the business we can work with a sufficient handover to ensure a smooth transition both to and from us when necessary.

In addition, if you have an inexperienced IT manager who you would like mentoring, we are able to work with you and them over a period of time to help them develop into an all round quality IT manager and allow them to learn from us and our experiences far quicker than if they had to learn by themselves through trial and error.

Mentoring can either be at a technical level; team leader level; project management; or to aid the introduction of standards, processes and control.

We are aware of both small and large companies who have existing IT support people in place, who are stuck at resolving a particular problem and have few places left to turn.

We are able to work with your team and become a fresh set of eyes over a problem, and work with you to resolve it.  Recently, we have helped a company who have been unable to resolve an issue for three months - they contacted us and whilst we did not know the details of the issue, we advised them accordingly with some suggestions.  They then asked us to take the problem on, so we undertook our own research and in-house testing, and then provided them a solution within a couple of days - and then worked with their own support team to implement the solution.

We enjoy this type of challenge and are able to provide assistance on any aspect, IT, networking, or pretty much anything technical.  As stated elsewhere - we will be happily honest with our experience in the area you require assistance.

Your IT team may have been supporting your systems, but they have not got the appropriate experience or knowledge to take your systems further forward.

We are able to work with them and help devise an appropriate certified training plan, and help them set up test/lab facilities and let them learn "for real" in their own isolated environment.  We can help as much as necessary, and even help with mock questions - explaining the answers and why it is X rather than Y rather than simply "thats the way it is".

In many organisations, both normal users and IT users fall into the habit of performing repetitive and tedious tasks manually.  This can be simple mail merges; checking backups or system logs; or even manipulating some numbers in Excel.

Humans hate tedious work and are prone to mistakes or forgetting to do the task, whilst computers are actually superb at performing it - when trained well they will simply just do it and let you know the results!  Depending on the tasks at hand, we can either simplify or fully automate tasks using scripting and automation tools as necessary.

If you currently build computers manually, installing Windows, installing applications and then configuring etc, we are experienced in imaging and automation of builds to allow rapid deployment of identically configured systems which have all sorts of other benefits.