The 3 levels of service we provide are basic, monitored and fixed cost.

Startup fees cover an initial assessment and short term plan. We want to get things off to a good start by understanding the current IT architecture and working with our customers to establish an appropriate direction.

The depth, detail and cost of the assessment and plan depend on the size, complexity and health of the network and customer preferences.

Basic services are designed for small businesses with very tight IT budgets. They minimize recurring IT costs.

Since key network elements are not monitored, we can't prevent, detect and respond to problems as quickly as we would like. But some organizations can't afford or prefer not to pay for monitored services.

The plus side of basic services is that monthly recurring costs are kept to a minimum. The down side is that more problems might occur and they will have greater impact on the organization.

Monitored Services

Monitored services are designed for the majority of small and medium sized businesses. They cost a little more than basic services on a monthly basis, but long term costs are minimized. Why? Because preventing failures and minimizing their impact on the organization more than offsets the monthly monitoring costs.

As part of our monitored services package, we offer discounted hourly rates when prepurchased on a monthly basis.

The plus side of monitored services is less down time, reduced overall costs, reduced support costs, more predictability and a smoother running operation. The down side is slightly larger recurring monthly costs.

Fixed Cost Services

Fixed cost services are designed for organizations that want to pay a fixed price for their monthly IT services and take advantage of a quantity discount. This alternative gives organizations a fixed expense they can budget for just as if they had an in-house IT staff. (The price for fixed cost services does not include improvements made to the infrastructure, which are charged on a time and materials basis.)

Before a client can purchase this alternative, they must purchase monitored services for a number of months so we can forecast the amount of work it will take to provide excellent service. Why? Because we must have intimate knowledge of a client's IT and understand the level of service the client requires before we can quote a price for this service. If we didn't take this approach, we'd be likely to either overprice the service to cover ourselves or underprice it and hang ourselves. Neither alternative is very attractive.

The plus side of fixed cost services is that clients have a fixed price they can budget for and they receive services at a discount. The down side is that the client is obligated to pay a larger monthly fee for the term of the contract.