What are managed services?
Managed Services are ongoing IT services that are intended to provide you with all of the benefits of having your own fully staffed IT department without the high cost of going out and hiring your own staff. This is sometimes referred to as a “Virtual IT Department.” Managed Services can also be used to describe individual IT services, such as network security management, that are delivered on an ongoing basis for a monthly fee. In either case, Managed Services are delivered via the Internet and are intended to fill in the gaps that exist in a company lacking in internal IT resources.
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How will DG&’s Managed Services benefit my business?
D&G’s Managed Services will help in many ways. Instead of working with multiple vendors to evaluate, acquire, deploy, and support technology, you have one company to handle all of your computing needs. D&G takes ownership of the entire computing lifecycle for one low monthly payment and gives you one point of contact. This allows you to truly use IT as a competitive tool by deploying the latest technology rapidly without large infrastructure costs. The headaches of managing your computer systems and networks are eliminated so you are free to focus on your business.
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How is your service delivered?
Our primary method of service delivery is via a secure Internet connection. Should an on-site visit be required, we will arrange for it, however, most issues can be successfully resolved without a site visit.
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What hours do you provide coverage?
Our Network Operations Center operates 24/7 for all network infrastructure monitoring and support. Helpdesk support is only available 8-5 weekdays.
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Do I need to locate my servers in your facility?
No. They can remain in your office or in any collocation facility you choose.
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How do you work with my IT department?
For larger companies, we work very well with the internal IT department, because our services are provided a la carte and are very effective in terms of freeing up internal staff for more strategic projects. For smaller companies, particularly those with a one-person IT department, there can be substantial overlap, and therefore it is critical to establish who will be responsible for what.
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How does billing work?
Unlike most IT consulting companies, our preferred method of billing is not hourly. Instead, our managed services are all delivered for a fixed fee per month per device so that your costs scale in direct proportion to your business. Hourly consulting is also available for short term projects. Contact Us to learn more.
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What is the response time?
For infrastructure monitoring and management, we guarantee a response time of 15 minutes or less (our monitoring software will alert us in less than 120 seconds). For helpdesk support, we offer a call back service with a response time guaranteed to be four hours or less. In most cases, the response time for helpdesk support is less than an hour.
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What types of support plans do you offer?
We have a wide variety of managed services from which to choose. This will depend on the extent of our services provided and what your needs are.
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What software do you support?
We support the Microsoft Office suite of applications as well as the Windows operating systems.
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How do you handle hardware support?
Virtually all of our customers have hardware support contracts for their servers and PCs from the manufacturer that provide next day hardware support for 3 years. In a situation where we've determined that hardware support is needed, we'll escalate the service ticket to the correct vendor on your behalf and handle the incident through to resolution.
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I'm not familiar with having IT services delivered remotely. How does it compare to on-site delivery?
There are more advantages than disadvantages. With remote support, we are able to be far more proactive by making use of our monitoring software and reporting systems. We have been supporting customers this way since 2001 and have found that we are able to resolve the vast majority of non-hardware issues. For hardware issues, please read the question above. The disadvantage is that you don't get to see our smiling faces as often, and we don't bring coffee and donuts on service calls.
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Are there security risks to receiving remote support?
No. We do not require you to open any additional ports in your firewall. We use remote control software that allows us to control your PCs and servers as though we are sitting right in front of them. For servers and other types of equipment, we use standard username and password credentials, just as we would if we were standing in front of the machine.
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How is the implementation process performed?
Once the planning sessions are complete, D&G will procure the necessary equipment for the implementation. Based on product and Internet access availability, we will coordinate an implementation date with your management and technical personnel. Once the equipment is tested and configured, D&G will handle the installation in conjunction with a designated member of your staff. After our installation professionals have your environment in place, they will test to ensure that it is working correctly. If it is included in your service, we will migrate data from any previous PCs or servers. The final step is to train your users on the new support system.
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What else is included?
That is a very good question. In addition to the day-to-day support, we also provide you with longer term strategic planning advice. Our account managers are able to do this, because they've taken the time to understand your business and have a lot of data at their fingertips about past resource utilization from the many reports that we are able to generate.
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What is a Network Operations Center (NOC)?
A NOC is a big fancy room full of computers and systems engineers that are all focused on just one thing: proactively monitoring our customer's IT infrastructure looking for problems to solve. So, instead of wasting time driving all over town, we invest that time in bettering our service to you.
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Why should I choose Managed Services instead of a traditional hourly consulting service?
The biggest problem with hourly support is that it's generally delivered on a reactive basis, and when it is being delivered, you are often paying the consultant to first discover what the problem is and then to solve it. Hourly support puts all the "time and expense" risk on you. Managed Services places all that risk on us.
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