What managing it actually means
We take responsibility for the environment rather than for individual tickets. That means we know what hardware you have, what it runs, when it was last patched, whether the backup completed last night, and which machine is going to fail next. When something breaks we already know what it is connected to.
The alternative most businesses live with is break-fix: nothing happens until something stops, and then everyone is guessing. Break-fix is cheaper right up until the morning it is not.
What we look after
- Workstations and laptops across Windows, macOS and Linux
- Servers, whether they sit in your office or in a data centre we do not own
- The network itself: switches, cabling, wi-fi, the firewall and the line coming in
- Patching and updates, so they happen on a schedule instead of when someone remembers
- Backups, including the restore test that proves they work
- User accounts, mail, file access and the tidying up when somebody leaves
- Vendor wrangling, so you are not the one on hold to your internet provider
How the work reaches you
Most problems are fixed remotely, because that is faster for everyone. When a job needs hands on it, a technician attends. We are based in Cranbourne and attend across Melbourne's south-east, and we support businesses anywhere in Australia remotely.
Response is usually under four hours, and a business that has never called us before is treated the same as one that has been with us for years. That is unusual in this trade and it is deliberate.
Questions we get asked
- Do we have to sign a long contract?
- No. Some clients want an ongoing arrangement because it suits how they budget, and others call us job by job. Both are normal here, and every job is quoted on its own either way.
- What does it cost?
- It depends on how many people you have, what you run and how much of it you want us to own. There is no price list because there is no typical job, and no call-out fee for asking. Tell us what you have and we will quote it.
- Can you work alongside an internal IT person?
- Yes. Some businesses have somebody capable who is stretched too thin, and we cover the parts they cannot get to, such as after-hours work, the server, or the security review nobody has time for.
- What if we already have another provider?
- Moving is routine. We document what you have, take over the pieces one at a time, and make sure nothing is left owned by nobody during the handover.