Traditionally, ‘Remote Hands’ is the name given to a team of external technicians that help a data centre with onsite maintenance and support. For example, tasks such as moving or securing network cables; network router and switch configuration; server refreshes and reboots; hardware and software replacement or installation; power cycling; inventory management and labelling; or reporting on equipment performance. This extra set of ‘remote hands’ alleviates the need for a customer to send over a staff member to undertake these tasks or investigate an issue, saving time and costs.
Since the start of the pandemic, however, border closures and lockdowns have forced many companies to re-assess how they manage not only their data centre infrastructure, but their other general ICT projects or challenges. Especially those companies that have a national footprint but a central head office from which the IT team operates. In the past, you might have deployed head office-based resources across Australia to deal with an unexpected outage or manage a new technology rollout at the local operation. This expense would be absorbed by your business as part of day-to-day operations, and without perhaps a deep dive into the many associated costs.
But with travel sometimes impossible, resources stretched to the limit and infrastructure costs rapidly escalating, the concept of a qualified team of local technicians throughout metro and regional areas is becoming more and more appealing. Operational and IT Managers are now understanding the benefits of a local remote hands service in terms of time savings, cost saving and reduced downtime.
Remote Hands is an invaluable service that allows businesses of all sizes to handle IT operations that go down in the middle of the night or during busy holiday periods, when internal resources are stretched thin or challenged to travel to a remote location. Over and above 24/7 emergency support, a Remote Hands service also includes more complex tasks that need someone physically present such as setting up a firewall, complex cable configurations, or equipment testing and replacement.
Remote Hands can be effective for any size of business. The obvious use case is for smaller businesses that may not have sufficient skilled resources to manage complex IT projects or to dedicate to annual audits or off-site requirements. However, Remote Hands is increasingly ideal for larger national companies who are seeking a standardised experience, but do not have the budget to employ resources in every location. It also provides companies with a single bill making it very easy to manage and track operational budgets.
Could your business use some extra hands? Every day across the Asia Pacific, Alliance SI helps customers to deploy IT infrastructure or swiftly solve critical issues to minimise business interruption with our expert Remote Hands service. Talk to us about how Remote Hands could benefit your business.