What is the difference between disaster recovery and business continuity?
Whilst disaster recovery develops a plan of action to deal with situations when a disaster strikes e.g. a Powercut, internet outage, server failure etc. A business continuity plan concentrates on ensuring your business is able to continue whilst critical aspect of the IT infrastructure are being restored in the background e.g. catering for a secondary internet line, making available a second premises for the employees to work from, providing offsite stand-by workstation or laptops in the event where the office is no longer accessible.
Do you provide a full infrastructure audit and does this fall into the professional category services as well?
Yes that's correct, whether you're a client of ours or not we offer a variety of IT audits ranging from Full IT Infrastructure audit, Cyber Security Audit, Telephony Audit, Network Infrastructure Audit, Electrical Infrastructure Audit and so much more. This always allows you to be aware of the gaps present in your infrastructure along with specific recommendations which are made against each downfall.
Fibre leased lines are still not available in our area, are there any alternatives you would recommend?
Fibre leased lines are spreading very quickly in and around the capital and major cities in the UK. However there are still many areas which have not seen a full coverage for fibre leased lines. In contrtast some business also may find the cost of a leased line too difficult to fit into the annual IT budget. A few providers however have accelerated their coverage in and around London offering reasonably priced contended fibre solutions such as HyperOptic, G-Networks and Virgin.
With the above in mind if fibre in its entirety is not available in your areas you may wish to explore other technologies such as VDSL or WiMax. Be sure to give our account managers a call on 0207 112 8504 where they can guide towards the right directtion.
Given the sudden surge of applications such as Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams what are the best options for our video conferencing rooms?
Almost all audio/video conferencing providers such as Zoom, Webex, Vonage, Microsoft Teams, 8x8 and Google Meet offer a variety of appliances which can otherwise deliver a fully functional hardware solution for your meeting rooms.
With a myriad of options to choose from the right solution will depend upon the wider communication and collaboration solution which your business currently uses.
We're technology agnostic on this front and would only recommend the right solution for your business. Please get in touch with one of our account managers so that we can help you identify the best solution for your needs.
I've been told by BT that my current telephony solution will no longer be supported by the end of 2025 and I need to upgrade with their cloud telephony solutions, what does this even mean?
BT announced that from 2020 ISDN networks will no longer be available for sale however they will continue to operate up until 2025 where all ISDN and PSTN circuits will be terminated. This means that well before this date all businesses will need to transition to a VOIP solution. VoIP or Voice over IP is a telephony solution which utilises the internet for calling rather than the public switching network.
In practice you would need to identify a suitable VoIP telephony provider and to migrate your current telephone numbers over to them. Once the telephone numbers have been ported you're then able to utilise a VoIP solution to make and receive phones calls.
Over the past 10 to 15 years many business have already made this move however if your business still is in the very few that require to be migrated to the cloud get in touch with one of our account managers so that we can help you choose the best solution.
What are your recommendations for a telephony solution, on-premise, cloud or a hybrid model?
This highly depends on the nature of your business, the number of calls you make or receive, office and remote internet connectivity, overall available bandwidth, call quality expectations, whether your employees all work from a single location or multiple locations, whether remote working has been fully implemented, the number of countries you operate within and the various features you may require from a telephony system. Considering the number of elements which can affect the choice we recommend that you give one of our account managers a call on 0207 112 8504 so that they can understand your requirements better and to provide you with suitable advice.
What are considered professional services?
Professional IT services help businesses overcome specific challenges through a dedicated project, such as cloud migration, deployment of new hardware, IT infrastructure audits, disaster recovery and business continuity support, IT system architecture implementation, and more.
What are professional services? How do they differ from managed services?
Managed IT services help businesses with the day-to-day running, maintenance, and support of IT needs on an on-going basis. They ensure your IT is helping you achieve your business goals at all times. Where managed services is an ongoing support package tailored to fit your organisation’s needs, professional services are short-term engagements to complete a specific project.
Can you name a few more services that fall into the professional service category so I can understand the meaning of professional services better?
Typically fixed-term projects might include things such as a full Microsoft 365 Exchange Migration, a Microsoft Teams Telephony Implementation using Operator Connect or Direct Routing, a Microsoft Azure Virtual Desktop Infrastructure or Azure VDI migration, a Cyber Security Plus Certification, an ISO27001 Certification, a New Server/Storage Hardware Implementation and Migration. These are all typical projects (which we’ve supported many clients through), that fall under the professional services bracket.
How often do your technology architects meet with us to discuss the future of tech, our business, and potential IT solution support?
Your appointed account manager and our technology architects typically review your upcoming tech requirement for the following 36 months on an annual basis. This allows them to draft the IT strategy for the following 3 years and to constantly review and update the professional services plan every 12 months.