Raw 03 - November 2008 - (Page 33)

2 BLA BLA BLA Exero 01, 5555 solution, both infrastructure and ongoing support, should be designed primarily for YOUR needs and not the ease of the installation from your supplier or support service. Whilst this may sound a little obvious the number of times we get asked to attend site and audit a network against the original brief happens more than you would imagine and the results are rarely favourable for the client. here are many IT support companies and indeed major players that will o er advice and support for you to get you to purchase the latest equipment. The hard part is distinguishing between what you want and what you really need. The best solution is to talk to your IT supplier if you have one or phone around a few. We are all more than happy to assist you and to help you narrow down what you actually need. It is very easy to get brochures and yers from major chains on both the high street and online o ering fast and fantastic equipment, but buy from them and you could be losing out on up to 30% of savings if you purchased the same equipment from a reseller! Money that is better o in your account than in theirs. The added bonus is that that your support company will normally o er you an installation service too, to ensure that you get the most out of it. We have all heard of Dell, Toshiba, Apple Macs, HP etc, all major brands, all well known, in fact, statistically most of you own at least one of their products. What’s less well know is that buying direct from these companies is also often more expensive than utilising smaller companies and partnered resellers. Word of mouth is by far the best method. We all work hard to build up and maintain a great reputation, but here are a few more quick things to consider. Choosing an IT supplier is a mine eld but there are measures you can take to help Ensure that your expectations are met and your investment is and remains protected. This guide is designed to give you help in asking the right questions when talking to potential IT Suppliers. A fuller version is available o of our website. Certi ed Systems Engineer, Microsoft Certi ed Systems Administrator and Microsoft Certi ed Professional. heck if the supplier has Professional Indemnity insurance. What happens if your solution does not meet expectations or the advice you are given is unsuitable. alk to reference sites. If your supplier is experienced and con dent in what they are doing, talking to a range of reference sites will not be a problem. Just ask. sk for a demonstration. Your supplier may talk the talk, but can they walk the walk? Asking for a demonstration will sort the men from the boys. Any partnered company will have access to demo versions of the software that they are recommending. This also gives you a great opportunity to meet with the company face to face. C T Don’t just take our word for IT Aztec has a solution for every kind of company. Here is what one of our clients has to say about ! T We found the right solution. F A Firmans. A leading glass manufacturer based in Harold Wood, 3 Sites all connected and with roving users. We have been using Aztec IT for many years. We called then to help out with issues from our previous IT Supplier. Since then we have never looked back, the servers and networks have not been down in 3 years. Their solution for joining our two oﬃces paid for itself in 18 months as promised and now saves us more than their annual support costs for the network per year. All of our remote users are now fully functional and the entire solution is stable. Aztec in addition to our dayto-day requirements, Aztec now look after our Comms system our Web site and Project manage any integration requirements that we have. They stand by their motto and really are our IT Department! Thank you Aztec we would be lost without you. Mr J Hodgson. F A Firmans W ho do they partner with? It is often said that a man is judged by the company he keeps. This nugget of wisdom also stands true in the world of IT. Often the value of partnership is rubbished by suppliers who do not have strong partnerships in place. In many cases partner programs require sta to have passed technical and sales exams before membership is approved and accredited. hat support options are available? OK, so your supplier has delivered your new kit but can they support it and what does that support cost? You may want a xed price contract or you may prefer to “pay-as-yougo”. Either way it pays to look at your choices up front. A W M S o how do you go about picking a support service? sk for sta quali cations. Even if the supplier you are considering has all of the accreditations and partnerships you would expect to see they still may not be sending out sta that are quali ed to do your speci c job. sk who is going to be project managing the work you are having done, look for industry or vendor certi cations such as Microsoft A A ake sure they are not contracting out your work. Many businesses claim to o er a full service but in reality they contract out elements of what they do. Whilst this is not usually a problem, you may nd that you are getting into di culties if there are issues with the work undertaken. opefully after this your IT will be a lot simpler and more re ned, however if you have any questions or would like to discuss things in a bit more detail then feel free to give us a call or catch up with us on the million impossible forum! Gareth Eyers Gareth.Eyers@Aztec-IT.co.uk H WE ARE ONLY A PHONE CALL AWAY. WE DO IT SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO AZTEC IT WORKING WITH http://www.aztec-it.co.uk

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Raw 03 - November 2008

Raw 03 - November 2008 Contents Bradley Chapman Rachael Elnaugh Linda Klassen-Brown Heidi Weir Mark Asquith Emma Thompson Chris Wright

Raw 03 - November 2008

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