Managed Services

Studies have shown that most businesses and public sector organisations lose thousands of pounds a year due to network downtime and hardware failures.

Advantex delivers proactively managed services with superior network performance, security, and reliability, to keep your network running at optimal effectiveness and efficiency, while meeting your time and cost requirements. Our core competence is in maintaining high availability of IT and Communications and we have expertise in a wide range of technologies.

Is IT and Communications Your Core Business?

As the owner of a small or midsized business, you invest in IT and Communications to increase your operational ROI (return on investment) but trouble can arise when you, or your team, are distracted from your core business initiatives because of IT and Communications issues. Often IT and Communications support and management are performed by employees who have multiple duties, which can impact both their ability to deliver in other areas and the overall quality of IT and Communications support.

Contracting Advantex to take care of your IT, means you can focus all your resources on your primary business operations, maximising efficiency and revenue.

We provide affordable, 24/7 best practices monitoring and management of all your IT and Communications assets – including systems, software, devices and virtual resources. We will also be automatically alerted to any event that may affect the normal operation of IT. Most issues can be diagnosed accurately and resolved through rapid remote action, which is much quicker than onsite visits.

The IT and Communications health and performance data that 24/7 monitoring brings makes Advantex better positioned to help you optimize configurations, manage system and software versioning, and eliminate costly and obsolete equipment.

Solution Overview

Managed Workplace consists of:

Onsite Manager – A single, lightweight piece of software, installed once at each customer site, the Onsite Manager automatically performs secure, comprehensive scans of customer environments to gather the up-to-date information that we need to manage their your IT and Communications assets with unparalleled efficiency. Deployment has no impact on your systems or operations.

With an Onsite Manager, Advantex can monitor and manage anything with an IP address, including: desktops, laptops, servers, managed switches, routers, firewalls, gateways, VoIP switches and phones, printers, faxes or scanners, off-the-shelf and custom applications, specialized equipment and environmental control devices, internal and external websites, SaaS (software as a service) resources, virtual machines and much more.

Service Centre – A powerful, web-based, centralised dashboard that allows Advantex to:

• View the asset health and performance data sent by the Onsite Manager;
• “Drill down” – dig deeper and focus on specific data to find the problem;
• Quickly fix the problem remotely;
• Configure advanced services;
• Produce a range of useful reports so you’ll know exactly what’s going on in your environment; and much more.

Monitoring and Alerting

• Advantex will proactively monitor your network and remotely address potential points of failure, before they become critical.
• When a site visit is required, automatic alerts guarantee a rapid response time.
• Problems will often be resolved before you’re even aware that they are occurring.

Security Assurance

• Extensive reporting gives you a bird’s-eye view of your entire network’s security.
• Alerts on attempted network access by unauthorized users.
• Includes a ban on high-bandwidth interactive games or illegal peer-to-peer file sharing applications that monopolize business resources and often introduce viruses and Spyware.
• Patch inventory ensures your operating systems are up-to-date and not exposed to vulnerabilities.

Asset Management

• We provide up-to-date hardware, software and patch information.
• This feature can be used for insurance claims in case of flood, fire or theft.

Preventative Maintenance

• Advantex minimises disruptions to your work environment by proactively resolving issues.
• Deep, remote visibility into the health and performance of your IT and Communications assets allows us to diagnose problems faster than ever.

Reporting

• You will receive comprehensive, graphical reports emailed automatically every month.
• Simplifies capacity management and upgrade planning

Quarterly Business Reviews

• We will meet every quarter to discuss the overall health and performance of your IT and Communications assets and ways to get the most out of your investments.
• Extensive data about your IT and Communications will support more accurate budget forecasting.

The Advantages of IT and Communications Expertise

Advantex delivers ‘best practices’ monitoring and management of all your IT and Communications assets with the use of hundreds of Policy Modules*.

* Policy Modules are sets of monitoring and alerting rules, developed in partnership with leading vendors such as Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Symantec and others. Policy Modules help ensure that everything in your IT and Communications environment is being effectively monitored and alerted on, and puts detailed, and accurate performance-related data at Advantex’s fingertips, helping to expedite diagnoses and resolutions when IT and Communications issues do occur.

Because Advantex’s managed services platform has an open architecture, any customer environment, no matter how diverse, can be easily integrated. Any changes, such as the addition or removal of systems, devices and software are automatically detected and smoothly accommodated.

The Do-It-Yourself Scenario

1. An IT and Communications problem occurs.
2. You discover the problem.
3. A team member sets aside core business tasks and begins investigating and researching the problem.
4. Best case: The problem is diagnosed accurately and resolved promptly on first attempt.
   Worst case: The problem requires multiple attempts at diagnosis and resolution; parts or external services must be ordered.
5. Problem is resolved.

RESULTS

• If the best case unfolds, resources are taken off core business activities for partial or full duration of problem diagnosis and resolution, resulting in loss of productivity.
• If the worst case unfolds, significantly more time is required to resolve the issue, resulting in more lost productivity on core business activities.
• In the worst case, additional, unplanned expenses are incurred, including the costs of downtime, such as lost productivity and lost opportunities.

The Managed Services Scenario

1. 24/7 x 365 best practices monitoring means we are alerted before, or as, the problem occurs.
2. We instantly and accurately diagnose the problem in the Service Centre.
3. We conduct rapid remote remediation from the Service Centre and resolves the problem.

Advantex gives you comprehensive reports every month and quarter to show identify issues, show work performed and support optimized IT and Communications budgeting.

RESULTS
You get the appropriate technology expert on the job from the start, with a fast and reliable resolution.

• Your team stays focused on core business activities.
• Many problems are detected and resolved proactively before you even notice there is an issue.
• Downtime is significantly reduced or eliminated so there are no more costly surprises.

Grow Your Business, Cut Costs!

Feature	Benefit	Value
24 x 7 Monitoring and Alerting*	We will identify IT and Communications issues much faster—often before you experience problems—and proactively address them.	You will see a reduced cost of downtime, and minimize the resulting lost opportunities, lost productivity, and service costs.
Asset Management	You will get accurate, up-to-date asset and warranty tracking for insurance or taxation purposes.	You will save money with better asset life-cycle management, and you will never pay twice for maintenance.
Security Assurance	Protect your assets and data with round-the-clock protection from virus, malware and other attacks; achieve regulatory compliance with legislation relevant to your industry.	You will reduce downtime and its associated costs, while increasing customer confidence.
Preventative Maintenance	Lengthen the lifespan of your assets and minimise technology problems that reduce productivity.	Your team can get more done, and you will reduce expenditures on emergency repairs.
Reports	You will always know exactly what is going on in your network, and be able to identify and analyse pending issues.	You will be able to optimize every pound you spend on IT and Communications based on accurate, detailed data.
Quarterly Business Reviews	An opportunity to prioritise projects, plan budgets, and discuss solution optimisations	You will be able to conduct more accurate budget forecasting based on the facts.

*Advantex will monitor systems 24 hours a day, however our Service Centre is open between the hours of 9 until 5pm on working days only.  Weekends and bank holidays are excluded, although 24/7 contracts are available with engineer cover around the clock for critical systems.