Computer Support for Businesses in London
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Sunday, 06 May 12 - 09:04 AM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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Good news for all businesses in London, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mumbai! No matter what computer applications you rely on, what your operating system is, how you want to handle backups, security, and Anti-virus protection or specialty applications, there is computer support for you that will solve all your problems. HTL Group! If you are just starting out, they will recommend and implement systems, if you are improving or expanding, they will help with a smooth expansion and even if you are up and running with a successful business system, HTL Group is available 24/7 for any emergencies.
HTL Group was founded in 2009 to provide specialist Information Technology support and consulting services to financial services clients. HTL has since evolved into a full range of cutting-edge, integrated and flexible products and services for a worldwide client base across all industries. Their experience and professionalism has many endorsements from satisfied clients. No matter what your request, they never say no!
What they offer:
- Personalized IT representative assigned just to YOU. They will be familiar with all the personal knowledge attributed to your company and needs, with a full staff of experts behind them.
- The have flexible hours, solutions, and guidelines for every need.
- They are available 24/7 with a support helpdesk and in critical situations guarantee a two-hour response time!
- Their mode of business is both pro-active and preventative.
- They have a Spares and Loans program: available equipment and parts at the ready. This includes additional desktops, laptops, monitors and or staff.
Most problems can be solved remotely through the support helpdesk, but their location in Canary Wharf, heart of London’s docklands and located just a short distance from the Canary Wharf Jubilee Line Station allows for easy remote calls or visits to their location.
London Olympic Support
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Tuesday, 22 April 08 - 01:10 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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The original budget for the games was set at £4bn, but the bill has jumped to £9.3bn in the three years since then. The PAC's report describes the original estimate as unrealistic, and yesterday its chairman, Edward Leigh, said ministers and officials had underestimated the true cost in order to win government and public support for the bid.
The government misled the public and parliament over the size of the budget for the London 2012 Olympics, the head of a parliamentary committee claimed yesterday as he delivered a damning report on the bidding process for the games.
In a savage critique of the original financial estimates, the public accounts committee (PAC) accuses ministers and officials of producing an "entirely unrealistic" budget which excluded "foreseeable" costs.
"It is now clear that the estimated cost at the time of the bid, just over £4bn, was entirely unrealistic," said Leigh. "It ignored foreseeable major factors such as contingency provision, tax obligations, and policing and wider security requirements. At the same time, the estimate of the extent to which the private sector would contribute funding towards the games has proved little more than wishful thinking."We don't know whether it was deliberate or not but it seems extraordinary that foreseeable costs were left out of the budget," he said. "I believe that at the very best they were economical with the actualité, as a minister once put it, in order to win support for the bid. Parliament and the public were undoubtedly misled over the true costs of the Olympic project."
The committee's verdict is an embarrassment to Olympics minister Tessa Jowell and Ken Livingstone, the London mayor, the two most senior figures responsible for drafting the original budget who remain in office.
She said Olympic bidding rules had required bids to be submitted at 2004 dollar prices, and that the security budget had been substantially affected by the July 7 2005 London bombings, which took place the day after London won the games.
She added that 75p in every £1 spent on the site was aiding regeneration in east London, and that significant private-sector funding had been attracted by the Olympics.
The report will also fuel the suspicion, long held in Whitehall and in Olympic circles, that the cost estimates were downplayed during the bidding process in order to secure the support of Gordon Brown, then chancellor, and the public.
London's original budget for the games, published after consultation between the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the mayor's office and the Treasury, put the cost of staging the games at £4.1bn. That estimate proved to be wildly inaccurate, and in March last year Jowell announced a new figure of £9.375bn. The increase was largely attributable to the addition of costs for security (£600m), VAT (£837m) and a contingency fund of £2.7bn, factors the PAC says were foreseeable and should have been included in the original budget. There was also a 35-fold increase in the budget for the Olympic Delivery Authority, which rose from an original estimate of £16m to £570m.
The committee also accuses the government of engaging in "wishful thinking" by overestimating the amount of private-sector support for the project, originally put at £738m but revised down to £165m.
The lack of a detailed assessment of the legacy the games will leave is also criticised, as is the decision to raid the National Lottery for a further £675m in order to fund the increased budget. The government has always maintained that the failure to include VAT was unavoidable as the tax status of the project was not clear until after legislation was passed to establish the Olympic Delivery Authority. It also claims it has had no net effect on the public purse. There has been no explanation for the omission of a contingency fund. Government guidelines state that publicly funded projects must include a contingency of around 20%, but senior DCMS sources say the Treasury approved the omission from the original budget.
Jowell last night denied that the government had intended to mislead parliament. "I utterly refute any suggestion that there was an intention to mislead and I hope that the country, parliament and the PAC would accept that was not the aim. There was categorically no motive to put in a bid that was anything other than based on the most accurate forecasts and the best intentions."
IT Support - return to HTL website
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Tuesday, 01 April 08 - 04:23 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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IT Support in London
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Monday, 31 March 08 - 03:00 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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IT Support in London
HTL aim to be a sought after provider of IT solutions to the finance sector in London. In order to achieve this we couple highly skilled engineers with efficient operating systems and white glove IT support. Our extensive experience and flexible approach to finding solutions result in a ‘can do’ attitude and high levels of customer satisfaction.
HTL's website
Here you will find out about HTL, our services and our clients. If you are an HTL client you can log on to the company Extranet and gain access to important information about your account as well as logging new support calls and checking the status of existing ones. We update the site regularly with the latest news relevant to our customers and you may like to subscribe to our RSS feed. If you have any comments then please don’t hesitate to contact us.
IT Support London
HTL is London's leading IT support and outsourcing service provider. HTL supports a broad range of technology sectors and maintains partnerships with many of the worlds leading manufacturers including Microsoft, Avaya, and Cisco. IT Support contracts start from as little as £100 a month and can cover multiple geographic locations and diverse network infrastructures. HTL's IT helpdesk monitors our client's servers 24 x7 and provides alerts to any potential server problems.
London IT Support
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Sunday, 30 March 08 - 08:41 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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HTL are an IT consultancy focused on supplying small and medium sized businesses with networking solutions and IT computer support in and around the London area.
HTL are the company of choice for firewall and VPN installations, systems and server installations to Microsoft upgrades and Open Licensing and migrations, to a complete network audit and support service, HTL have the experience and expertise to help your business.
Our engineers have experience of installing and maintaining;
- Windows Server Platform, Exchange, SQL, SharePoint and many other industry standard servers into small and medium sized companies
- Windows Workstation Platforms from Windows 98 to global roll outs of Windows Vista and Office 2007 ensuring your business desktops are up to date and problem free.
- Complete security audit, group policy and workstation monitoring services, we have a complete security solution for your business workstations.
- Cisco,Watchguard, Zyxel, NetScaler and many other firewalls into small and medium sized companies
- Global VPN's to an entry level firewall for a small company we ensure your business data is safe.
- Complete security audit and anti-virus and anti spam services, we have a complete security solution for your business.
- Hosted servers in data centers running varying Operating Systems including Windows Server Platform, OpenVMS, RedHat, Suse, Fedora Core, Cobalt RAQ 3/4/5/550.
- Hosted servers running IIS, Sharepoint, CRM, Apache, VoIP, SIP, IAX, IAX2, H323, Exchange, MailEnable, BIND, DNS, POP3, IMAP, SMTP, SMTP SPAM filtering, Postini, ISA, Exchange Hosted Services.
Focused on providing IT Support for small businesses in London and the South East, HTL have a range of computer support services to help your business. With unlimited telephone support, remote support, unlimited onsite support services you can be sure your IT systems are in a safe and reliable hands. You can have your own IT department on call without the need for dedicated staff.
HTL are the first choice for IT support in London, with many server support services. If your looking for Microsoft Support, Cisco Support or Avaya Support HTL's London based engineers are fully trained.
IT Support case study
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Monday, 10 March 08 - 08:05 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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IT Support, Case Study
IT Support & Strategy plc
IT Support & Strategy
Remote & Telephone Support
7am – 7pm Monday-Friday
As a pre-requisite for all maintenance contracts, require remote access to the office network. This allows technicians to access the server remotely stopping the traditional problem of miscommunication over the phone.
Remote Support technicians can actually view the user’s screen from our own technical support rooms. can also manipulate the terminal as a user would to fully understand all issues in place. This all makes the reality of support a lot easier for both sides by limiting the need for technical assistance on-site and the full communication of problems.
Telephone Support have a team of technicians ready to answer any immediate queries or issues that you may have. There are no call queues and you will always speak to a person not a machine. If the relevant technician is unavailable, a message will be taken and they will return the call as soon as they are available.
Email submission For issues that are not requiring immediate resolution but more a long term requirement with a future deadline, can send an email which will be prioritised accordingly.
How does IT Support work?
Primary Technician
A technician will be assigned to the solution. This engineer will work on the solution from the configuration of the network for support. He/she will be the first point of contact for any support issues that you may have and will have the greatest knowledge of your network among the support staff.
The primary technician will also fully document your network allowing the helpdesk full access to your solution in case the primary contact is unavailable.
Point of Contact
recommend that there will be designated points of contact for each site, who will be advised and reported to by .
Selected staff at may be expected to:
- Understand backup logs
- Be able to insert backup tapes as instructed
- Restart machines as directed
- Insert CDs and disks into required machine
- Send test emails and test solutions
- Understand lead composition to run a PC
- Have an understanding of the network topology to help identify point of failure
- Have a basic understanding of the server hierarchy
- Provide software package usage support
Re-active Site Visits
Response site visits will be charged at £100 for the first hour, £75 thereafter.
A response site visit can be utilised when technical support deem it necessary that technician attend on site to resolve a network issues.
New Solutions/PC installs
New solutions can be implemented as part of a scheduled onsite visits, however if the implementation time goes outside the scheduled visit this will be charged at the standard hourly rate.
Pro-active Support
Critical Services Monitoring
All critical services that support are monitored. are notified immediately in the event of a hardware or software failure and so can begin resolving immediately.
- Servers - immediate notification in the event of server failure
- warnings when server capacities (and individual drives) are within dangerous levels
- Firewalls - immediate notification in the event of firewall failure
- Routers - immediate notification in the event of router failure
- warning if connection speed drops to too low a level
- Services - immediate notification if services such as mail servers and Thin Client services fail
Quarterly IT Strategy Meetings
A senior technician will attend quarterly onsite meetings, to discuss IT strategy and plan forthcoming projects. Agendas for this meeting will be set by both and . These meetings also provide a chance to discuss and review service levels.
Backup Support
will perform a weekly manual verification that backups have been successful.
/ can be notified every time a backup fails to return a 100% backup. Notification is immediate and investigation can begin for the reasons and therefore a full resolution.
Automatic Updates
will ensure that automatic updates are set up for both Windows and Anti-Virus solutions. These will run independently and will also make regular checks to confirm that this is taking place.
Other updates will be implemented remotely by the team.
On-site Support
Scheduled Onsite Visits
Scheduled onsite visits will be on the same days of each month within the period of the support contract unless both parties reach prior agreement the preceding week.
Scheduled onsite visits can be used for whatever purpose is agreed at the time. In usual scenarios they will be used for:
- General network maintenance – server/PC updates, virus, backup maintenance.
- General user queries. try to encourage that non-critical issues are built up and addressed during scheduled visits.
- User training
- New projects/hardware/software implementations
- Branch office visits
Support to exclude the following:
- Hardware costs.
- PC rebuilds due to hardware or Operating System failure
- User induced hardware failure - non-specified software loaded, PC spyware/virus infections, non-authorised server reconfiguration servers.
- User software functionality queries, for example “how do I mail merge a word document?”
- Component replacement delivery costs.
- Any new network equipment. Additions will need to be made to the support contract to include any components to be supported by .
- Server rebuilds.
’s Service Level:
Response and predicted resolution is split in to three categories, Global, Local user and administration. The response times refer to a technician beginning the referral, with the aim to resolve as quickly as possible. aim to deal with all support issues immediately but the following provide upper limits to the response time.
Type Issue Response Predicted Resolution
Priority 1 – Global Issues
Remote Major server issues: no email delivery, server software failure, critical data restore, exchange mailbox access 1 hour 2 hours
Onsite Major server issues: where issue cannot be addressed remotely, for example server failure 4 hours 8hours
Priority 2 – Local user issues
Remote Individual delivery failure: email software failure, access to exchange functions 4 hours 8 hours
Onsite Individual delivery failure unable to be resolved remotely 24 hours 32 hours
Priority 3 –Administration Issues
Remote Configuration issues: addition of new users, reconfiguration of public folders 72 hours
Initial Site Visit
will attend onsite for a half day at the head office site prior to the commencement of the support contract. This will involve:
- Survey and Documentation of the existing network
- Meet site contacts and provide basic procedure training
- Installation of remote monitoring and control software
- Identifying any initial issues
Optional visits can be made to branch offices for the same purposes
What does Hardware and Software does cover?
Support to include:
- Support of all core server & PC functions, including; e-mail, anti-virus, backups, printing and file serving.
- Unlimited telephone, email and remote second line support for IT team with regards to Operating System software, e-mail and network connectivity.
- PC support for network availability issues
- Printer support for network availability issues.
Pricing
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Initial Site Visits
Network Audit and documentation- Head Office Only £
Software and Hardware Audit (if none available) £
Total £100
* Additional Branch Visits/Health Checks will be charged @ £ per site
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Annual Costs
50 user Unlimited Telephone and Remote Support £
Backup Support verification £
Fortnightly ½ day on-site visits (26 onsite visits) £
Quarterly IT Strategy Meetings £
Total £100
IT Systems Support London
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Saturday, 01 March 08 - 02:56 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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These links are useful if your looking for IT support for your small or medium business in London. HTL are the company of choice and their website is located here. For IT support in London visit their website.
The future of IT support
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Sunday, 01 April 07 - 05:16 PM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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My August 1st Report on Service Desk 2010 provided a number of predictions as to what the support organisation and technology might look like in 2010. I would like to delve a little deeper into what the IT support might look like in 2010. As many of you know large support centers. We meet quarterly and generally fifteen of the twenty participating support executives are able to attend. At our next meeting, September 12-14 at we will focus on what the group thinks the service desk / help desk / support center will look like in 2010. I know the group well enough to know that the IT support is and will continue to be of absolute importance. I would like to hear your thoughts and input. I suspect there are a number of vendors that might like to weigh in on this one. I will take all of the input that I receive with me to our September 17-19 Strategic Advisory Board meeting, which will also be addressing this subject.
What Do You Mean "IT Support ?"
Key IT Support Design Concepts
I want to focus on three design concepts that I think are important. Hopefully this will stimulate your mind and may even give some vendors food for thought on what to begin building.
1. My Personal IT support —," my personal agent on my workstation. The avatar will learn my interaction patterns and issues, configuration and connectivity history, mistakes, and maybe even attend "virtual meetings" with other avatars. I believe there will be hundreds or thousands of avatars meeting on servers and sharing the successes and challenges faced by their "real" personas. The avatars will discuss what environmental or interaction patterns preceded the real personas need to access the support . Coming out of the meeting of avatars (and with input from real technologists), the avatars will monitor and take corrective action to keep me up and running. As the is personal to me, I will control what my avatar is allowed to communicate with others. I expect that some pesky little avatars will get out of control and face legal issues related to privacy or confidentiality, so a watchful eye will be needed to ensure all avatars follow the law.
I see it as a starting point for end-user or customer interactions when performing self-help actions in order to solve a technical problem or to get an answer to a technical question. I use the term “IT” to indicate that the support being discussed is for technical or technology issues. I could have used the word "technical" or "technology" as well. The majority of our members are a part of the IT organisation, thus referring to the support as an IT seemed appropriate. Some of the concepts could also refer to non-IT or non-technical support as well.
2. "The People's Knowledge Base"—Knowledge is our understanding and implication of facts as we see them (my definition). The IT support will need massive quantities of knowledge, but it will need to be useful, findable, and current. Knowledge can exist in hundreds of places and in thousands of minds. The IT support in 2010 will need to improve, in order of magnitude, knowledge consolidation, findability, and currency. Many of these issues are addressed in the principles of KCS (Knowledge Centered Support) which we teach and can be read about here. I refer to the 2010 environment as the People's Knowledge Base because I see such a need to collaborate amongst everyone who accesses the knowledge base. Knowledge is not really owned and cannot be controlled by companies or people, it is to be shared to facilitate people interacting in their work and personal lives (with certain IP situation exceptions).
Consolidation—Organisations have hundreds of sources of knowledge, both from internal and external sources. There continues to be opportunities for vendors to enhance the manner in which these sources are linked and accessible within a single support . The vendors need to view the linkage as a two-way interaction as well. If I find knowledge that is obsolete, how does the technology communicate it back to an
originating source? You should also give my avatar access to your knowledge.
Knowledge that cannot be found is wasted. One of the hardest things for help systems in the past has been to provide key words to helpful information that would match the words that the end-user will use. Most of the capabilities to improve exist today, but are not common. By 2010, the tools for finding knowledge should improve and the processes for building and maintaining knowledge will have matured, so I predict that the percentage will reduce the incidents escalated to a live person by 30 percent or more in most organizations and some will do much better.
3. Ergonomics—This term is most often used for physical things (the study of how a workplace and the equipment used there can best be designed for comfort, safety, efficiency, and productivity). I believe there are best practices for human interactions with support systems. By 2010, we (HDI) will have helped to clarify these best practices. In doing so we will find answer to questions such as:
- Should help systems be passive and only appear when requested or should our avatars be allowed to pop-up and make suggestions?
- Should a support interaction start with a Web site with lots of options or should the avatar be allowed to present different views based upon the situation?
- How do we ask questions quickly and easily that provide the avatar with sufficient input to be helpful?
- Do we require multiple fields for questions, context or environmental information (the avatar should know most of this), and knowledge domain clarification or should we all use Googlish search structure?
- Can we individualize information retrieved based upon our personal desire for text, pictures, videos, or links to individuals?
- How can we make it easy for everyone to be a part of keeping knowledge current?
Conclusion
Support cost will continue to be a concern. It is not an issue unique to IT or IT support, it is a concern for every area of your organisation. The cost of support will be less on phone and more on technology, openness, and collaboration. Thus the IT support will be a requirement in 2010.
Knowledge sharing may, by 2010, go outside the boundaries of your corporations or customer base. For more than a decade, people have discussed the possibility of knowledge being shared across the Internet. Such sharing does exist today, but generally only within topical or subject areas. The models general provide incentives for the providers of knowledge (from recognition via rankings to monetary rewards) and in most, but not all, models there is a cost to the consumer of the knowledge. I suspect that the pricing models will not be successful. Regardless of how broadly you share knowledge, your support must be simple, intuitive, deep, consolidated, and easily updated. Such external support models will be known to my avatar who will be able to use these sources of information to help me in my daily life at work and at home.
Currency—Knowledge is most valuable when it is learned sooner rather than later. That applies to all aspects of our lives as individuals, but it also applies to knowledge sharing at work and at home. In the ideal world, when one person learns something and documents it, it should be available to everyone. If someone saw the knowledge and wanted to add to it, they could. If a conflict arose as to whose knowledge was best, a resolution process would exist. By 2010, corporate knowledge release policies will be far more advanced. Release means providing access to knowledge to larger and larger groups (support section, support organization, IT, the internal end-user community, and eventually to individuals throughout the customer base or even anyone with access to the Internet). Fear of bad knowledge or incomplete knowledge or inadequate knowledge will become lessoned. We will still struggle but we will and must share more as a part of our everyday interactions with technology. As I always
say, "All of us are smarter than any of us."
Best of luck in your journey to support excellence!
Directory of IT support Companies in London
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Thursday, 29 March 07 - 12:12 AM (GMT) By London IT Support in General |
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- HTL
- Connect
- Wavex
- Managed Networks
- Knowall
- IT Lab
- Network London
- IT Vet
- IT Support Now
- Century Computing
- ISN Solutions
- Maxnett
... More items are available in our News Archive
