See also Disaster Recovery, Remote Backup and Virtualization | Embedded | Wireless
We have 7 types of services:
We can manage a customer's site or PC, if they give us access, as a sysop securely and remotely over the internet using ssh and sftp or remote assistance tools. This gives incredible flexibility and power to our offerings as we don't have to be in a city to to service that city's customers. We can service them from Brisbane QLD or wherever else we are on the planet so the customer has a high level of service (very immediate) and we do not have to spend time travelling and staying overnight in temporary accommodation to give good service. Systems we service like this are UNIX such as Linux and FreeBSD or Windows XP.
In remote assistance tools like LogMeIn.com, the customer can view us manipulating their PC and be trained or helped along to save time and money at both ends, a quite powerful combination. Once inside we can fix many underlying problems and get things moving that a customer with tuition cannot come up to speed in time to do. This system of remote assistance is quite revolutionary in how we do business and grows us despite being based in a remote area like Brisbane QLD.
The customer needs to have an online connection using software to redial to save us ringing them to reconnect. There are versions of software that do not require plugins which we will use if the customer wipes out their disk occasionally and loses all our work (disaster recovery).
We find using online assistance like this very powerful and useful for fixing computers and installing software to get Skype up or to understand what a problem is without the overhead of phone calls and travelling to fix equipment onsite.
We are sure you will benefit greatly from this dextrous way of doing business totally digitally!!
If there is a physical problem such as a cable not being properly pushed into a network adaptor on a PC, we will do onsite troubleshooting to fix it as internet support will not work in these circumstances. While we are there can also check the router and USB Phone to see if they are working and need cables pushing into them or audio setting up. This is easier done onsite than over the phone or via email and is worth us investing in the trip to get it fixed. We have serviced Wollongong, Sydney and Wellington NSW when we were based in Orange NSW this way quite successfully.
While we are at a customer's office we can also sort out cost overruns and get a project back on track much quicker than fighting over the phone. A face to face meeting seems to clear up many misconceptions and unrealistic expectations and get a job back on track like nothing else!
If the customer provides us with a support ticket with configuration information in it to reproduce a bug, we can login to our own virtual server and reproduce the errors without having to go near their server and deploy a fix for the problem from our inhouse resources.
If the customer does not have enough modern PCs to run test machines, we can install VMWare and load a virtual operating system image to test systems at low cost and high efficiency and enable us to get on with the job despite a lack of dedicated hardware on the customer's premises. We have done this onsite in Brisbane when we were doing technical support for a small company and just could not get a spare PC to test systems on to achieve our objectives. VMWare virtual images are a great way to get around these hardware limitations often foisted upon us to save money by the customer.
As usual it is easier to spend our own time and money doing virtualization than waiting for ages for the customer to spend money then ending up doing it for them for free just to get a job done on time and make money. This seems to be how small businesses avoid paying any money - they put financial pressure on suppliers and in the end they donate equipment or time to get a job going rather than have it fold due to the customer avoiding investing in equipment and training. The tradeoff is we own the technology and bring our own tools to the job to avoid delays so the customer owns nothing and just gets a service.
Get in touch if you are interested.