As most small businesses cannot afford a full time IT person to support their business. This is where a Managed Service Provider or MSP can assist.
Simetech it is a local MSP in the Hunter Region and we have honed our skills over the years, working with multinational corporations, local government, small to medium sized businesses as well as home businesses and consumers.
Using these skills, we offer a range of support options for small to medium businesses as well as home users to keep their computers, servers, networks and other infrastructure running reliably.
Generally, a good MSP can reduce your IT support spend by at least 50 – 75% and you get high level support skills.
Most people have heard of ‘the cloud’ by now and it is more than just the internet.
As server and IT hardware has become much faster, we (in the IT industry), have found ways to squeeze more out of that equipment, to get more bang for you buck.
Servers can be located in data centres and be shared by numerous clients through virtualisation technologies, maintaining performance, security and separation with the current technology.
Due to much faster, and cheaper internet technologies now available, instead of having servers on premise (if they choose), businesses can link to virtual servers in the cloud, just like you use email from cloud servers, you can link cloud servers to your business premises for logging onto the network, security permissions, file access and more and with no large capex purchases to buy hardware, can take advantage of monthly payments where the cloud provider pays for the expensive IT hardware and software.
Maintenance, licensing, updates, replacements are all taken care of by a little elf in the data centre while you sleep.
If you are looking for occasional remote and/or onsite IT support for your business and home, with no lock in contracts, our ADHOC IT support option is the best value.
We can either log into your computers remotely to assist or come to your site or home and you only pay by the hour, with a minimum of one hour and charged in thirty minute blocks thereafter.
We strive to remain competitive and generally offer better value than our competitors in most cases, hence why our current customers keep coming back and recommend us.
Travel may be applicable if more than 30 minutes away from our office.
Simetech it also offers customers the choice of a block of support hours per month, so our customers can budget for their IT support needs to cover most general support issues, as well as hardware maintenance.
Normally if you have one or more servers, we allocate a specific amount of time per month to support these, to ensure reliable operation through maintenance checks, and then discuss any additional hours to cover issues that pop up throughout the month or to support staff.
Generally this support option starts with three hours of included support per month, covering maintenance of equipment, updates and support for staff, offering quick response to calls due to our monthly supported customers getting priority over adhoc customers. This also gives businesses an idea of their IT spend for the month so they can budget better for the year. We can negotiate less than three hours if you wish, however, the added benefits normally included (reduced rates over included hours, etc.) will not apply.
We also have customers that pay for a three to four hours per month and this covers them for server and desktop maintenance, as well as enough hours to cover most IT issues that pop up throughout the month. Any customers with three or more hours of support per month, also get a discount off additional hours provided over their included time per month if that happens and normally we do not charge travel within 50 km as well, saving them even more.
If you prefer to know you are fully covered for support of almost every IT event that may crop up throughout the month and want a fixed rate per month, without any additional cost, our Full IT Support option might suit you better.
With this option we negotiate a support package that includes maintenance and support of your IT infrastructure that covers you for day to day support as well as major issues that can bring down your business.
You also get extended support hours through the week and and no call out charges for weekend issues, if negotiated in the agreement.
Are you still swapping USB drives each week to backup your data, missing the occassional swap?
Wish it could be automated for a small monthly cost? Well it can and it is affordable.
Simetech it has cloud hosted backup options available that are charged per block of 100GB. Unlike some backup programs that backup to the cloud, our backup software highly compresses the data it backs up, to maximise the storage, saving you money.
We can setup one or more backup jobs that backup only files and folders once, twice or more times per day or less or we can take a snapshot of your entire computer or server and back that up to secure storage in the cloud, allowing you to recover either a single file, folder or the entire computer or server. The backup jobs also cleans up preset old backups and can keep as many or as little as you wish, as well as getting email notifications of success or failure and many more options.
Even in the event of a catastrophe, if your server or computer was backed up using the full image method, your computer can be converted into a virtual machine and run from the cloud, which can get you through until your onsite server or computer is rebuilt. Very cool and keeping downtime to a minimum.
One of our customers has around 30 sites that we backup to the cloud everyday and after being hit with crypto viruses on numerous occasions, and recovering data from these cloud backups, we have been able to recover everything up to the most recent backup and get them up and running again , sometimes working overnight to get them going the next day.
Other customers have their full server and business data backed up as a server image and despite having over 400GB of data and as well as their operating system files, they are paying for less than this in their cloud storage due to the high level of compression.
Keep in mind that a lot of insurance companies will not insure businesses unless they have some form of offsite backup.
Simetech it also offers cloud based Microsoft Exchange email hosting (so you can connect outlook) and sync all of your email folders like Sent items, inbox, drafts etc. as well as Office365 email hosting options.
As part of our email hosting, you get Spam Experts mail spam and malware filtering included, which is one of the best mail filtering packages. We can offer just the email filtering option, if you already have your own email server and want extra spam and malware protection and also have your email scanned and block potential malware and viruses coming to you via email, putting your business at risk of crypto viruses and ransomware.
Our email hosting is similar to Office 365, and runs on solid state hardware for speed and excellent up time.
We can also assist with any Office 365 support, migration or setup if you prefer that as well, which has it’s own built in spam filtering.
We are happy for you to use whatever you like and we can assist with whatever you need.
We can also offer our customers, a fully managed antivirus solution for a low monthly cost per computer or server.
This allows us to set policies of how often your computer will scan for viruses using a quick scan and a full / deep scan, and reports back to our servers of any issues found and appropriate actions taken. Unlike your standalone antivirus, it may or may not find anything, but generally you have to search the logs to find what it was, usually after the fact and then further action may be needed, which you may not be aware of.
Our MAV option is a month by month setup with no lock in contracts, if it can grow with your computers and staff or be reduced each month if needed. It is very flexible and you do not have to pay up front per year.
DATA RECOVERY
Simetech it also offers a local data recovery service for laptops, desktops, USB drives and USB sticks.
CLEAN ROOM
We have a business partner that specialises in ‘clean room’ data recovery, based in Sydney, where they will disassemble hardware and replace parts until they can get it working, to recover data.
If we are unable to recover your data, we can arrange to have them quote on this service.
Quotes are free, once they receive the equipment, but repairs can be anywhere from $600 upwards, depending on what is needed, how soon it is required and more the issues the equipment has.
This is why it is CRITICAL to backup regularly, if you stand to lose something of value that is irreplaceable. It is cheaper to buy a USB hard drive or use cloud backups now, than it is to spend $1000 – $5000 on ‘hopefully’ getting your data back when equipment fails. We should know, we have been through this process ourselves and loss months of data years ago, and have learnt from the experience! So you should take our advice and backup NOW!
MOBILE
We come to you. Whether it is your home, office or a temporary location, we can normally come to your location to fix most issues.
Any travel charged excludes the first 15 – 20 minutes from the Maitland area, and it is at a reduced hourly rate, unlike some that charge from office to office at their full rate.
Many issues can be resolved onsite, generally within an hour, depending on the complexity of the issue.
Any computers requiring re-installation of Windows operating systems or deep virus scanning, which can take a bit of time, are normally done in our office, to minimise how much time we spend onsite charging you by the hour. We can then backup your data, reinstall Windows and any updates, programs etc. and restore your data back and then deliver the pc back to you.
Any follow up work we try to then do using remote support to save you time and money and if we do not fix something we said we fixed initially, we do not charge to fix it again.
Ultimately, our customers come first so we can ensure they get the best possible service we can offer.