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IT Specification

Concept Patterns knows that quality of IT support and expertise is an important factor in the relationship between itself, our customers and our customers' IT Support. On several occasions our customers have been left with substandard hardware, unlicensed machines and set-ups that have been far from ideal. During installation problems arising have been costly in terms of down time and money required to fix the problems.

Our installations are planned to cover all necessary details and half a day's delay can seriously detract from the effectiveness of installation and training for our customers.

The following recommendations have been formulated in conjunction with a high quality IT company to allow our new customers to know what to look for when choosing IT personnel and what to ask for in their requests for proposals to supply equipment.

Following these guidelines is going to dramatically increases the likelihood that our customers end up with the right equipment and the right IT support. Failure to do so will be expensive in the medium term. 

  • Server should be "business quality hardware" from a reputable supplier - Quality main board, processors, power supply, fans, hard disk etc - including on-site warranty that is acceptable to the client. (e.g.: IBM, Dell, HP, ASUS, ACER).

    • Failure to meet specification: overheating motherboards, crashing hard disks, long turn-around times to get support.

  • Server and other hardware should be installed to professional standard using industry standard best practice by an IT consultant experienced in Microsoft Windows Server set-ups.

    • Failure to meet specification: intermittent connection problems, lost productivity, costs of reinstalling server.

  • Excellent time management and communication skills of IT Support - available when required.

    • Failure to meet specification: lost productivity waiting for problems to be resolved.

  • Automated Backup as part of installation. Backup schedule should be adjusted to suite acceptable data loss scenario.

    • Failure to meet specification: lost data, lost time, expensive recovery.

  • Internet and Firewall should be business quality - installed to best practice.

    • Failure to meet specification: corrupted or lost data, identity fraud, stolen data and documents

  • Business Quality Anti-virus installed to best practice - automated updates and licensed. (example Symantec, Trend Micro). Must be on all computers, centrally managed.

    • Failure to meet specification: corrupted or lost data, expensive recovery.

  • Licenses for Server and workstations to be visible - to comply with licence agreement, supplied licence code stickers must be attached to the hardware.

    • Failure to meet specification: Fines for software piracy, expensive to purchase operating systems.

  • Passwords should be of a secure nature (min 6 characters, including numbers or symbols) - stored in a secure location.

    • Failure to meet specification: Confidential data loss

  • Create an administrator account for Concept Patterns and enable it to remotely access server and/or the computer of the main contact staff/support staff.

    • Failure to meet specification: Longer delays in handling support issues, less convenience.