IT Consulting Services
Information Technology can be a minefield for small businesses to navigate and selecting the right tools to increase productivity is a major challenge. Confusing jargon and a myriad of solution choices promising similar results can be daunting for all but the most battle hardened business owners and managers. IT is meant to be the support system for your business – working in the background to drive sales and increase revenues. Often it is seen as an unreliable burden and a major cost for an organisation. Let us put our experienced team of IT consultants to work to provide the appropriate solutions to create a springboard to success for your business using best of breed solutions from industry leading vendors.
Running a small business is a 24/7 balancing act for most owners who must wear numerous hats on a daily basis, IT should not be one of them.
An example of our IT Consulting service lines include:
Disaster Recovery - helping to define, design and implement your DR solution to meet the RPO/RTO of the business.
We have extensive experience with DR, having designed and implemented a wide variety of solutions using Public Cloud (e.g. MS Azure), Private Cloud (Offshore or otherwise) and Hybrid Cloud technologies. These best practice solutions are selected and combined to fit the clients individual needs, objectives and budget. For example, Hot Standby solutions using SAN to SAN replication from vendors such as HPE 3PAR and DELL EMC can provide a Disaster Recovery solution that is easy to verify and test on a regular basis. Whereas, warm standby solutions using host based snapshot and replicate technologies from vendors such as Veeam or Carbonite can often provide a high level of protection at an affordable price. Finally, it is vitally important to test the DR solution to ensure that an organisation’s Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) can be validated. It is also important to remember that the Disaster Recovery solution needs to be updated to reflect the changes to the production systems if the client has added any new systems or applications.
High Availability - providing high-availability of your critical services and applications.
We have a strong background in designing and implementing tried and tested solutions from a variety of vendors, such as Vmware, Microsoft, HPE and DELL EMC, to protect the Server, Storage and Network. Each client will typically have a budget in mind along with some technology constraints that will favour a particular vendor’s solution and the talented IT consultants at ITO will help to de-risk the process and help to deliver what is often a complex and high-impact project. We work with Pure Storage, WD Tegile, Exagrid, HPE and DELL EMC for Storage and CISCO, HPE and DELL EMC for network devices.
Storage & Server Virtualisation - ‘doing more with less’ using tried and tested solutions from a variety of vendors, such as VMware, Microsoft, HPE and DELL EMC, to reduce the replacement hardware costs and increase the workload manageability and flexibility.
Integrating the Storage with the Server Virtualization platform is now the de-factor standard rather than a ‘bleading edge’ technology. This has now been further extended to include the Network layer and it is often referred to as a Converged Infrastructure or Convergence. Convergence allows organisations to use their compute resources in more efficient and cost-effective manner, lowering their IT management costs and increasing the speed of software and service deployment. It has many benefits but the major benefit revolves around the simple management and rapid provisioning of servers, storage and networks.
Public & Private Cloud - translate the hyper and reap the rewards using solutions from VMware, Microsoft and our exclusive Offshore Private Cloud Services.
Hybrid cloud is a flexible solution that combines the advantages of public cloud (costs, scalability) and private cloud (security, personalisation), with the added benefit of being able to choose the cloud that best suites workloads, cloud bursting, and scale resources up and down to suit needs. Our Technical Architects can help you design a solution that can make the most of a private platform using VMware or Hyper-V for critical resources and a flexible, low-cost MS Azure public cloud to provide resources on demand, offers the best of both worlds.
Email & Messaging – communicate with your clients and suppliers from any location using a variety of devices using the Microsoft e-mail solutions.
We have a strong background in designing and implementing e-mail systems from Microsoft such as Microsoft Exchange and more latterly the Microsoft Cloud based e-mail services. In addition, our technical team is also very experienced in traditional clustering of private cloud platforms or enhancing the in improving security and availability of the environment using solutions such as MIMECast Offshore and Multi-Factor Authentication.
Wired & Wireless Networking - the ‘bits and the bytes’ relating to switches, routers and wireless solutions from DELL EMC, HPE Aruba, Cisco, Cisco Meraki, WatchGuard etc.
Integrating the wireless and wired network is a common requirement in today’s ‘always connected’ society. Traditionally, in the past it would seem that security concerns have kept these two networks as separate entities. However, to fully benefit from workspace flexibility and implement the ‘right’ wireless network it is vital to engage with the right partner, that is vendor agnostic and can provide the best vendor solution to meet your requirements. After all, the integration of the right wireless and wired network is a critical security requirement and will have a long lasting impact on your budget and your business.
Security
We have a comprehensive team of in-house specialists who can assist you in all aspects of IT security. Some IT Security solutions are listed below but this is by no means a comprehensive list of our capabilities.
- Managed Secure Web Gateway - CISCO Umbrella
- Managed E-Mail Gateway - MIMECast Offshore
- Managed Firewall - WatchGuard / CheckPoint
- Managed Two-Factor Authentication - DUO
- Managed Artificial Intelligence EndPoint Protection - Cylance Protect
- Managed Anti-Malware EndPoint Protection - Bitdefender / Symantec / McAfee
- Managed Multi-Factor Authentication - Microsoft MFA for Microsoft 365/Office 365
- Laptop Encryption - Microsoft Bitlocker / McAfee
- Mobile Device Management - MS Intune
- Workstation & 3rd Party Application Patching
In addition, we have partnered with a World Class Global Security Provider with offices in the UK and USA to bring an enhanced security offering to the Caribbean. Instead of having to identify and vet multiple vendors, we serve as a single source and trusted partner and advisor.
The enhanced IT Security services would include:
- Cyber Awareness & Security Training
- Vulnerability Assessments
- Penetration Tests
- Web or Application Assessments
- Managed SIEM or SOC
- Security Policies & Procedures
- Digital Forensics and Incident Response
- Comprehensive Risk Assessments & Compliance
Project & Programme Management - let us help you! Our PRINCE2 certified project managers can ensure the successful delivery of the project.
Our PRINCE2 Certified Project Managers can help you to define, control and deliver a successful project to ensure that the budget and timescales at met. PRINCE2 is a de facto standard used by the UK Government, widely recognised and practised in the private sector in the UK and internationally.
IT Audits - for IT security, IT Infrastructure, Disaster Recovery or regulatory bodies (CIMA).
Our Technical Architects use industry recognized auditing methods to perform technical or functional audits of IT Infrastructure. We focus on auditing areas of IT such as IT Security, IT Infrastructure and Disaster Recovery. Often, these IT audits are needed prior to an internal or external audit by a regulatory body such as CIMA. However, there are other occasions when an IT audit or IT health-check might be required. For example, prior to a new hardware or application going ‘live’ into the production environment.
Remote Access - anyplace, anytime access to systems and data from any device using solutions from Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp.
Mobile productivity is no longer a luxury—it is demanded by the younger millennials and it is fundamental to support a happy and effective workforce. As employees increasingly expect to be able to work from any location, on any device, your organization must adapt to these demands and deliver remote application and desktop access that provides a new level of flexibility for their employees. Our Technical Architects have many years of experience with Citrix and Microsoft to design and implement solutions that meet your needs and budget without impacting your security posture by implementing two-factor authentication by default on all remote access solutions.