New Year’s resolutions for 2021: Sort IT out

Details: Created: Thursday, 07 January 2021; Written by Paul Grigg

In 2020 we improved IT for many businesses. Here are some of the projects we’re most proud of:

Supported our entire customer base’s shift to working from home
Deployed SentinelOne next generation antivirus to all our customers
For a private school we deployed a three-server remote desktop server farm
For an accountant we replaced their entire server infrastructure
Numerous laptop and PC fleet replacements

Supported our entire customer base’s shift to working from home

In February (seems a very long time ago now!) the prospect of mass work-from-home seemed likely. We helped our customers identify what the challenges would be and how they could prepare. For every customer we prepared our own plan, even if they weren’t ready to consider it at the time, so that we’d be ready to keep them working.

Even with all that preparation we still had to manage a tidal wave! Our skilled engineers configured hundreds of VPNs and Remote Desktop connections so that our clients could work from home. And we advised on how they could make their work from home solutions secure.

Deployed SentinelOne next generation antivirus to all our customers

The increasing threats from malware, ransomware, viruses, phishing etc are major challenges for our customers. It is clear that traditional antivirus is no longer up to the task. Therefore we invested in SentinelOne, included it as standard in our support plans and have rolled it out to our customers. SentinelOne is a Next Generation Antivirus package, which we wrote about in our blog in July 2020. The following key features were pivotal in our decision making:

Uses AI to detect malicious behaviour, rather than relying on signatures
Can isolate an infected device from the network, preventing further infection
Ability to “roll back” a device to the state it was in before the malware struck

For a private school we deployed a three-server remote desktop server farm

To boost the School’s home working remote desktop capacity we needed to add three additional servers, but during the height of the first lockdown we wanted to be as safe as possible. We talked the on-site IT technician through installing the physical servers in the rack and starting them up. We were then able to connect remotely and complete the remote desktop server farm setup. They now have capacity for 150 staff to work from home at any time.

For an accountant we replaced their entire server infrastructure

This accountant’s three physical servers were 7 years old and although still performing ok, were well beyond their initially designed lifespan. We performed a comprehensive analysis comparing the costs and benefits of a cloud migration vs replacing the servers. Our customer chose to replace them rather than migrate fully to the cloud. Navigating the changing lockdown rules and supplier logistical issues gave us some headaches but we completed the project without any downtime during business hours.

Numerous laptop and PC fleet replacements

We have completed many laptop / PC fleet replacements during 2020 and have adapted our processes to keep our customers as safe as possible. Most have been completed by carrying out as much setup as possible in our office, re-shipping to the end-user, and talking through any remaining tasks over the phone.

telanova: the outsourced IT team that feels like your own

Providing advice, consultancy, helpdesk, monitoring and maintenance, updates, upgrades, security: all the things your in-house team would do, but better and at a fraction of the cost and hassle.