Echo Zambia - ITaaS

ITaaS is not a technology shift but rather a transformative operational and governance approach to the provision of IT services. Best practice frameworks and principles ensure standardised and virtualised IT services that flex according to your business needs.

IT has become a critical tool for businesses to run successfully but is not necessarily the reason they exist.

With finite financial resources, and managers who have limited time and attention, outsourcing can help you direct the efforts of your resources to critical strategic activities and customer care.

Outsourcing converts fixed IT costs into variable costs, enabling effective budgeting. Only paying for what you use, when you need it, makes outsourcing a smart financial choice for mid-size organisations.

The cost of ownership to implement a Service Desk, tooling, monitoring, alerting and ITIL skills in an IT Department can be prohibitive, and can be difficult to manage. An outsource model means all those costs are absorbed by the service provider and all the tools and methodologies are configured to best practice standards.

Organisations that try to run an in-house IT department themselves can have much longer research, development, and implementation timeframes.

Increased costs and time-to-market delays have a big impact on the ability to be competitive, and ultimately affect the customer experience.

Hiring and training IT staff is time consuming and very expensive. Outsourcing lets you focus your human resources where you need them most, and reduces payroll costs related to benefits and employer contributions like training, leave pay etc.

With an outsource partner, you are guaranteed to have the necessary skills at a fraction of the cost of a full IT department.

Organisations often struggle to retain IT personnel. Technical people are motivated by change and innovation, so it is possible that your in-house IT employees may feel stagnant in their positions and look to move after a few years.

Internal staff turnover and taking sick or vacation leave impacts the ability of the business to deliver its services. Outsourcing gives you the peace of mind that there is continuity, eliminates the risk associated with a key-man dependency, as well as obviating the risk of losing valuable IP when a key person leaves the business.

Certifications like Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) are important, but so is experience. An outsource provider has all the necessary skills who regularly expand and update their training, are certified, and have experience to support a multitude of technologies.

Organisations outsource IT because it provides access to a broader range of technical skills, and a larger talent pool. It is not good enough to know how to help users with day-to-day office problems. Your IT services provider, whether insourced or outsourced, must have access to the newest resources, and knowledge of the most recent threats and areas of vulnerability.

Whether a new requirement arises, a service needs priority attention, or a network issue pops up, having a quick response time is critical in ensuring minimised downtime and disruption as well as ensuring that a small anomaly does not cascade into a technological catastrophe.

With a reliable outsource partner, you are assured that any unexpected development that needs attention will be addressed on priority and in the quickest turnaround time, all the time.

A quality outsource partner will have available and skilled resources to start new projects quickly. Handling the same project in-house might involve weeks or months to hire the right people, train them, and provide the support they need.

For most implementations, quality IT companies will have the scale and the experience to accelerate delivery, saving time and money.

With day-to-day operations taking the most effort, limited skills mean that innovation is generally awarded the least amount of attention, when it should be a key focus area.

Outsourcing IT enables your resources to spend time on the activities that will lead to the growth and success of your business.

Having access to a CTO advisory service enables your business to look beyond the break fix, day-to-day operations, allowing you to use technology to innovate and power your key business objectives.

Service Desk

An IT service desk is a single point of contact between the service provider and the users, and its function is to facilitate the integration of business processes into the service management infrastructure.

Using ITIL principles to govern how the teams create, catalogue, offer, and resolve services to the end-user, we provide a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) for all your IT incidents and service requests, which are acknowledged, administered, managed and escalated in line with specified service levels.

Additionally, our 3rd party management of all your IT-related service providers means you only need to deal with a single partner.

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Managed ICT Infrastructure

Managed ICT Infrastructure is the administration and management of essential operational elements to effectively, efficiently, and proactively utilise technology, information, and data to support overall company goals.

While the services that the ICT infrastructure management team delivers are typically behind the scenes, they maintain the technology that supports the daily operations, such as Internet, email, and data accessibility, which rely heavily on real or near real-time management and monitoring solutions.

The main goal is to minimise downtime and maintain business productivity.

Echo will provide remote support and ongoing proactive administration, monitoring, maintenance, review and alignment of the infrastructure technologies that support your diverse technical operations.

In-scope services include:

Servers and attached storage
Public cloud tenant
Database administration
E-mail services
Network and Internet services.

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Managed Security

Managed security means that your ICT partner is responsible for preventing, detecting, and responding to threats before they wreak havoc on your data. It is key for the success of your business that you keep your data protected from outside eyes.

Our Managed Security Services provide a systematic approach to managing basic security services, geared to your diverse technical operations.

In-scope services are configured and maintained following best practice and vendor guidelines and in accordance with agreed-upon standards.

In-scope services include:

Directory, identity and access management
Mobile device management
Patch management
Audit event logging
Anti-virus/malware
E-mail security
Firewall/UTM.

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Managed Workspace

Managed workspace provides remote support, maintenance, regular reviews and alignment of the end user computing environment.

In-scope services related to the end user workspace are configured and maintained, following best practice guidelines and in accordance with agreed-upon standards.

On a periodic basis, the capacity, performance and compliance of the end user workspace are reviewed and assessed as part of a review process related to refresh cycles, upgrade planning and general services alignment.

Ongoing pro-active remedial action is taken with both software and hardware in order to reduce incidents and problems. Stakeholder Reports are provided within the first week of every month, reflecting all contract-related activities in the previous month.

In-scope platforms include:

Workstation hardware (all form factors)
Workstation peripherals
Operating system (Microsoft and macOS)
Productivity suites (Microsoft Office, Office 365 and G Suite)
Messaging application such as email clients and video conferencing
File services (on-premise, One Drive for Business, SharePoint, DropBox for Business, Google Drive and iCloud)
Any agreed-upon and approved LOB applications/systems.

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Disaster Management

Our DR service provides support and ongoing proactive monitoring, maintenance, regular reviews and alignment of backup and recovery services critical for an organisation, in order to minimise the impact of a natural or human-induced disaster.

Services are configured and maintained in accordance with best practice and vendor guidelines, agreed-upon standards and/or in accordance with defined Recovery Time (RTO) and Recovery Point (RPO) objectives (as per latest agreed-upon DR Plan). Monitoring thresholds are configured in order to trigger alerts upon performance breaches.

Managing disaster recovery risk presents special challenges. The likelihood of a major disaster or significant disruption is generally low, often remote—but the consequences of a system failure that cannot be restored could be significant or even catastrophic. Without effective disaster recovery capability, companies are at risk of:

Extended disruption or inability to deliver services that depend on systems
Inability to recover systems and restore lost data
Subsequent financial loss to themselves and their customers
Reputational damage.

Ongoing administration and documentation are provided for in-scope hardware, software/systems and their configurations. In-scope services include:

Server back-ups
Cloud services back-ups
DR planning
DR simulation/testing
Device stand-by
Server room environmental monitoring.

With such high stakes, it makes sense to partner with Echo for a full disaster management service.

We understand how to create the balance between focusing on preventative actions and planning to manage the consequences of possible disruptions, with financial and resource constraints.

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Value-added Services

Service Manager

We can provide service management as a shared or dedicated function depending on the size of your organisation and the complexity of your IT environment.

Assigned to act as the interface between your business and Echo’s Service Operations, the service manager (SM) is responsible for managing your technical portfolio by ensuring the effective transitioning, delivery and billing of contracted services, managing all risk, as well as ensuring accurate reporting to all stakeholders.

They will facilitate procurement and technology solution requests being fulfilled, manage the IT asset lifecycle, manage technical escalations, and facilitate and chair all Operations meetings.

Our service managers have a unique combination of business analysis and technical skills so that they can plan for both day-to-day and longer term strategic initiatives and ensure that the technical solution aligns with your organisational and user needs.

CTO Strategic Advisor

Echo provides periodic C-level strategic inputs for developing an IT strategy, gauging IT maturity, employing good IT governance processes as well as leveraging best practice and trending infrastructure technologies when appropriate.

In-scope services include:

Solution design as and when required
Input into third-party ICT solutions
Developing and maintaining an ICT strategic roadmap
Implementing and driving good IT governance.

Procurement

Echo sources, quotes and acquires ICT equipment and services from vendors on your behalf, always ensuring that proper co-ordination, escalation and communication takes place throughout the process until delivery is complete.

All products are sourced from leading industry distributors or vendors and in all cases we adopt an open book pricing policy. Warranty administration is provided as a service.

Additional Value-adds

There are several non-core services we offer, where Echo acts in an advisory and facilitation capacity. These services include:

Data cabling, wireless and server room infrastructure
Back-up power solutions
Server room environmental monitoring
Microsoft 365 enhancement productivity training for TEAMS, Planner, SharePoint, OneDrive, OneNote, SWAY, Workflows and Lists, Power Automate.

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