Service Announcement for Remote Monitoring & Management
We are delighted to announce that the Remote Monitoring and Management service has now been formally added to our Service Catalogue. If you would like to purchase the service or need support on it, please contact us in the normal way.
Service Name
This service is called Remote Monitoring and Management. (This service was previously known as Smart Little Guy but this name has not been used since 28th January 2011).
Service Dates
This service was added to our service catalogue on 19th August 2006.
Service Description
A small software agent is installed on each of your computers and reports back to a cloud based dashboard that is accessible to our support engineers. As a result, our engineers get access to a comprehensive set of tools to efficiently secure, maintain, and improve your IT systems, all from a single dashboard that highlights issues before they can become showstoppers.
Service Mandate
RMM shines a constant light on the health of your system and at the same time gives us the tools we need to fix problems and provide day to day support. This service is an essential tool in the provision of IT support to our business customers, as a result all business customers are required to have an RMM subscription in place in order that we may provide IT support to them.
Service Features
Report problems quickly and easily with the lifesaver icon.
All systems with RMM have the lifesaver icon. In just two clicks your users can be well on the way to raising a support ticket by following the guidance shown here. It can literally take under ten seconds to report a fault to our team.
Get remote support quickly with remote access and no costly site visits.
Our technicians can provide faster support at lower cost by viewing and controlling your computers from a remote location–we can even do this when your systems are unattended. Remote Access greatly reduces the time it takes to diagnose or fix many of the issues your users experience and frequently avoids costly site fees.
Improve your security completely automatically with built in patch management.
The software installed on your systems becomes out of date over time and should be regularly patched to maintain security. Patch management software will search out applications that need a software patch and will try to apply them without any user intervention – we’ll be alerted when patches fail and can even block some patches if required.
Get peace of mind with the hourly & daily safety checks.
The RMM software runs a once per day safety check on each computer along with hourly checks that will flag up any major problems which are likely to affect security or interrupt your users ability to work. Do your systems have enough disk space? Are any hard disks reporting imminent failure? Are there any critical errors that indicate your system is being hacked? Our daily and hourly checks run silently in the background and will let us know if there’s a problem.
Reduce wastage and time-to-fix with “always on” asset tracking and software auditing.
Your computer equipment ages over time and must be upgraded or replaced in order to work with modern software. Hardware audit features mean we get an accurate picture of your hardware without interrupting users and can make accurate recommendations about upgrades and renewals on a planned or on an as required basis. Each computer on your network can have dozens of software applications on them. Some will be mission critical, some maybe unnecessary, some could be a security threat –and in all cases the software may or may not be properly licenced. A software audit allows us to furnish you with a picture of what software you have at your site and will allow us to recommend actions based on the audit where instructed.
Get an extra layer of security with web protection.
An added layer of protection monitors connections between your network and the outside world, keeping users safe and productive while the use the web. Web protection includes threat protection, bandwidth monitoring, access controls, blacklists and more.
Service Pricing
At time of writing we have two pricing models for this service as follows:
New Customer Pricing & Discount Scheme
From 1st January 2019, all new business customers will benefit from all of the services described above and are charged a flat fee of £5 per device per month. This charge is considered a ‘retainer’ fee and means any device that is covered by our RMM service is ‘in scope’ for support. We usually offer significant discounts (e.g. free for first billing period and then 50% off for three months) during a “getting to know you” period. After the initial discount ends the price reverts to £5 per device per month.
Pre 2019 Customer Pricing Scheme
All business customers that on-boarded with us on or before 31st December 2018 will be on our old pricing model. You will benefit from all of the services described above APART FROM the web protection service which is available to you as an optional extra. Customers are typically charged £10 per server per calendar month, but a lower rate of around £1.50 per calendar month for desktops. Extra charges are made for certain features such as web protection and improved remote support. Over time all customers will be moved to the newer pricing scheme and the web protection service and improved remote support will be introduced.
Service Notes for Customers
Security
Two factor authentication is required before our technicians can access the system.
Additional RMM Services
RMM does include more optional services which we currently choose not deploy. These include Endpoint Detection & Response, Network Device Monitoring, Network Discovery, NetPath, Backup and Recovery, Managed Antivirus, Remote Mobile Device Management and Risk Intelligence. If you would like to learn more about these services please let us know. We may add these services as an optional extra.
Initial Installation & Removal
As part of our PC build process we sometimes install RMM on systems even when a customer has no active RMM subscription. We do this so that we can more easily remotely support customers in the first few weeks when they get a new PC. In these situations we remove those computers from our RMM control panel towards the end of each calendar month; in turn this triggers silent removal of the RMM software from the customers system.
Inactive Systems
You are charged for RMM on inactive systems so that we can continue to have oversight on it. If a computer remains inactive for more than 365 days the computer is automatically removed from our RMM control panel and the RMM charges will drop off your RMM invoice during the next billing cycle.
Patch Management Policy
Our patch management service will automatically download and install patches that are rated Critical or Important by software vendors including Microsoft. Other patches rated as Moderate, Low or Other will be reviewed and approved manually for customers that have a weekly or monthly maintenance plan.
User Documentation and Links
Learn how to raise a new ticket with the lifesaver icon. [HERE]
This page was last updated 21st June 2021