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Helping organisations to create a robust, scalable and flexible IT infrastructure

Because the performance of your business is critical to you and is often directly related to the performance of your IT network, you will need an IT partner who has the capability to create a bespoke design and provide a reliable and scalable IT platform for your business.

At Hi-Grade, whether you need to upgrade your existing IT network, install a completely new one, or expand your existing network capacity, we will work with you to design and build a system that suits your company’s business requirements and budget.

Our experienced consultants will provide you with the advice you need to ensure that the IT solutions chosen are cost effective, ensure optimum productivity and efficiency, and are scalable through time.

Our team of certified IT engineers and technicians will deliver IT solutions on time whilst ensuring minimum impact on your day to day business operation.

One of the most popular buzzwords in technology at the moment is server virtualization and as its main benefits combine cost reduction and simplification, the focus is moving more and more towards smaller businesses.

Server virtualization is really all about gaining more from what you have. It allows you to make one server act as five, ten or even twenty virtual servers. The need to do so has become more apparent as processors have increased in power and memory capacity, meaning they are often underutilized, and have excess capacity.

Historically, every time you have had a new application, you’d add a new server. You’d have one server acting as a mail server, another as a central repository for office files, another for the customer database and so on. Now, sophisticated software from the likes of Microsoft and VMware, enables a single server to be sub-divided to run multiple instances of operating systems and application. This shared piece of hardware is known as the host and its multiple virtual servers are known as virtual machines or VMs.

A good analogy is the hard drive on a PC. Although there is only one actual drive, it can be split into several volumes, which are really virtual hard drives.

By using VMs, you can improve productivity and efficiency. A typical server may use 10-20 percent of its computing power and 20-30 percent of memory at any given time, the rest ends up being wasted. This figure can increase to 65-75 percent when using a VM system.

THE BENEFITS

The major benefit from server virtualization for smaller businesses is not having to buy more servers. By consolidating many physical servers onto one, they can dispense with several of their existing machines and load everything onto one server — or move from 20 physical servers down to a few. This means less time spent on maintenance and less money spent on powering multiple servers.

IS IT RIGHT FOR YOU?

Whilst there are considerable opportunities, server virtualization is not for everybody. If yours is a small business with only a couple of servers, you have no need to bother with virtualization. The benefits are likely to be insufficient to outweigh the costs of buying new hardware paying for the implementation skills.

The optimum size of business seems to be settling at around the five-to-seven server level, particularly where the business has low utilization rates on its application servers. Any larger than seven makes an organisation almost guaranteed to gain productivity and efficiency benefits from implementing the technology.

IMPLEMENTATION

On the basis that your business appears to be able to benefit from server virtualization, you need some specialist consultative support to make sure you achieve your business goals. At Hi-Grade we have a team of experienced engineers who will not only spend time listening to what you are trying to achieve, but also provide independent technical expertise to specify the best solution to meet your needs.

Our process is broken down into five specific steps:

1. Initial consultation to establish your business objectives
2. Analysis of your existing IT systems including all applications servers and their levels of utilization.
3. Preparation of specific recommendations to outline where you can benefit most from server virtualization
4. Detailed proposal on hardware and engineer resources, pricing and timeframe for implementation of the recommendations
5. Supply, installation and maintenance of your system, incorporating proactive, preventative maintenance to ensure your system is running at optimum performance

Beating the hackers, bots, viruses and phishing attacks prevalent in our modern computing world is an arduous task. Maintaining system integrity and protecting your hardware and data is a constant and ongoing task. One has also to recognize that threats can come from within as well as from without.

Viruses and other unwanted code are still finding their way onto company networks and the threat from hackers is constantly on the rise. But the biggest danger still comes from within – as staff spend their time accessing dodgy websites, sending e-mails with corrupt attachments, and stealing private company information. Corrupt data and programs are brought in by CD, USB sticks and even iPODs have been known to carry harmful software.

So how do you take control of the situation? Having an acceptable usage policy is a vital first step. This is followed by thorough training to ensure all your staff understand why network security is important. And what can happen to your business – and their jobs – if policy and procedure are not followed.

You can add suitable technology to enforce the policy, not just the anti-virus and anti-spam software that often come as standard on most PCs, but systems that manage and ensure safe emailing processes. Software is now available to block access to certain websites (eg gambling, eBay, home shopping, social networks). And, if you really want to take control, installing a “thin” client network will put you in the driving seat for safe operation.

All these strategies takes time to implement thoroughly. But with Hi-Grade as your accredited security partner you know you’re getting a skilled team on your side to help you win the battle against threats. Hi-Grade will manage the complete security process for you – including writing your policies and training your staff – or simply manage key aspects of it such as your network or PC security. It’s up to you to decide how safe you want to be.