In a strategic effort to create an unparalleled support and operations offering, remote IT management specialist, Space Age Technologies (SAT), has entered into a joint partnership agreement with Genesis Systems. The alliance, initiated in August 2002, has seen the companies join forces and merge their individual strengths as operations and support specialists.
By incorporating SAT's proactive and preventative operations management services (SATOps) with Genesis' reactive support expertise, the partners have geared themselves with an all encompassing and unique peace of mind solution designed specifically for the small and medium business (SMB) sector.
SAT's new partner-to-partner initiative has seen it join up with some of the Western Cape's most renowned support providers in a consolidated endeavour to improve the current service levels available to SMBs.
"Instead of offering only reactive support services aimed at resolving problems already experienced by the end-users, we have designed a proactive service which identifies and prevents impending irregularities from impacting the users," says Mark Geschke, MD of SAT.
The two different components within the SATOps system, proactive monitoring and preventative management, were recently rolled out onto the server platform of Miltons Attorneys, a long standing client of Genesis. Says Chris Welham, Managing Member of Genesis Systems: "We are extremely pleased with the results received from SAT's operations management service, and will recommend it to any SMB owner. Not only are we guaranteed of best practice, but we now have the reassurance that our client's servers are monitored 24 x 7."
The roll-out will see SAT not only provide the 24 x 7 platform monitoring, but it will also be responsible for the daily and weekly management functions on Miltons' server platform. "While we have outsourced Miltons' proactive support requirements to SAT, we remain responsible for resolving support issues that may arise or be assigned to us by SAT's technicians," says Welham.
"By using local as well as internationally designed software, the SATOps agent extracts important event log information from Miltons' server. These event log entries are transmitted via XML Web services to the SAT Data Centre in Stellenbosch where they are available to operations technicians in a Windows-based front-end application," says Geschke.
Technicians continuously monitor the events received in the SATOps console for possible disruptions or irregularities. Critical events, such as hardware of software failures, can be attended to immediately or can be referred to the support provider responsible for the respective server, while less critical warnings provide an overview of possible problems which might impact negatively on the server's stability on the long run.
SATOps service management functions include the following daily, weekly and monthly services:
* 24 x 7 service monitoring and control: SAT monitors a client's key system parameters such as server events; available disk space; active services as well as application log files.
* Security management: SAT is responsible for optimising a platform's security set-up by proactively monitoring system parameters while specific emphasis is placed on the secure set-up of all Internet visible systems.
* Software management: SAT loads critical software patches in order to minimise security vulnerabilities and possible functionality flaws.
* Anti-virus management: Daily updates and verification of anti-virus definitions; scan engines and scan logs on a client's server and desktop computers ensure effective protection against viruses and worms.
* Storage management: SAT verifies the daily backup of all critical system information and user data by checking all the relevant events and log files.
* System management: SAT maintains the health of specified devices by monitoring the device event logs for indications of impending system problems and/or irregularities.
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