By reacting promptly to an automatically generated alert, Management Service Provider (MSP) Space Age Technologies (SAT) saved Stellenbosch Vineyards (SVL) from a serious Exchange failure.
"This is a remarkable achievement, a problem that could have cost us thousands of rand was detected and corrected before our users were affected," said Hermann B"ohmer, CEO of SVL.
For the last year SAT has worked very hard to develop and refine its IT Operations Framework (SATOps), specifically based on the complex requirements of the SME market. This Framework not only provides a structured approach to IT services for smaller companies but the SATOps infrastructure enables technicians to centrally monitor the vital statistics of all their clients' distributed servers on a 24x7 basis and react immediately should any abnormal system behaviour be detected.
SVL, one of the first clients to fully utilise the SATOps Framework, have already experienced the benefits. At 20:12 on 8 May, the SATOps Monitoring System detected irregular events on SVL's Exchange 2000 Server.
"Although the Exchange server was operating smoothly at that time, our technicians were alerted by an abnormal event entry which pointed to a concealed problem that, if not rectified in time, would have caused a serious failure," said Craig Ongers, SAT Support Technician.
Within 22 minutes after the first manifestation of the problem, technical staff had already reacted by remotely connecting to the server. After SAT technicians spent more than seven hours during the night repairing the corrupt server, SVL's users could start their next day's work unaware of the previous evening's events. "The most important factor of proactive support is preventative management," commented B"ohmer. "SAT's differentiator is the 24-hour monitoring of server status as part of a proactive support package, allowing technicians to foresee and prevent problems, placing them well ahead of other IT solution providers."
Companies everywhere, irrespective of size, are becoming more dependent on their information systems. Sadly they often do not take the necessary precautions to safeguard themselves from system errors which cause network downtime and user frustration. Specialised IT support and preventative management is no longer only a niche-market privilege, but instead, is becoming a more affordable and vital business tool.
"We are extremely proud of our SATOps Framework and especially the significant amount of value our proactive services provide to the SME market," said Mark Geschke, Technical Director of SAT. "We are convinced that our Framework will quickly set the standard that all IT support companies will be measured against."
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