Professional Services

Our Professional Services are technical ‘people-based’ services (consultancy, project management, engineering etc) that wrap around our primarily ‘systems-based’ Managed Services Portfolio. Whether you’re upgrading an existing WAN, LAN, server infrastructure or application - or creating a totally new solution - we can provide up-to-the-minute skills to help design, deploy, and support the optimum converged environment for your business.

During our time we have noted some interesting and worrying trends: that many technology projects are initially under-scoped by up to 40%; that up to 80% of the support required by customers is during the in-life phase; that alarmingly less than 5% of organisations monitor the performance of their applications. We believe that by providing the best possible advice we can engineer-out risk... and build agility and flexibility into our customers’ technology environments. It’s about earning your trust.

One of the key elements of our engagement process is supporting the refinement of the Statement of Requirement. This piece of work is critical and the time spent here will reduce the issues and incidents that arise during in-life management. While we fully appreciate that many customer requirements are restricted by budget, we will work with you to clearly outline the impact of each decision. Our unashamed aim is to ensure your journey with us is a good one. Happy customers translate into renewals, trusted relationships, and your success… and that’s our goal.

In our experience, most technology migrations are under-scoped by 30-40% which exposes clients to all sorts or risks. This is compounded by the regrettable fact that many legacy LANs, WANs, server infrastructure and applications have been developed in isolation and while they may cope with current business demands, they may struggle when new technologies are introduced. At that point, the danger is that you discover the circuits are wrong, server performance is inadequate, that you have capacity or class of services issues and the applications are not compatible. But at that point it’s too late. We believe it’s risky to make assumptions… and we don’t.

It is a surprising fact, but irrespective of the circuit type there are approximately 60 steps to delivery. The perception that you simply press a button and the circuit is delivered on time, every time is wildly inaccurate. Effective provisioning is about never assuming anything. It’s about checking and getting confirmation at every step of the way. Our PSM staff are engaged from the very first project initiation meeting to ensure that the delivery of circuits and associated hardware dovetail perfectly with the implementation plan.

The primary role of our Network Engineering division is to ensure the discipline of high technical standards. This not only guarantees success during the configuration, testing and acceptance process, but importantly it also ensures that when the network transitions to our Network Operations Centre (NOC) for 24/7 support there are fewer incidents downstream. To underpin this quality control policy we allocate a lead network engineer to every project.

In simple terms, it means that interoperability and interconnectivity between legacy software, hardware, and operating systems must be predicted and overcome; that operating differences between Cloud and on-premise delivery models need to be anticipated; that disaster recovery environments take into account both data and application backup; and that the benefits of new technologies do not increase security risks. Our Managed Infrastructure Services include Virtualisation, Cloud Services, Server Hardware, Backup & Archiving, Storage… and more.

We’ve provided physical infrastructure services on everything from small office environments to 900-room hotels; we’ve refreshed the access points across some of the UK largest WiFi estates; we’ve linked offices via Laser Line-of-Site; we’ve installed Satellite connectivity to organisations in remote areas; we’ve installed many hundreds of Bonded 3G/4G solutions. The stats alone speak volumes: over 12,000 km of cabling, more than 17,000 WiFi access points and more than half a million network access points.

It is this rounded capability, backed by an unswerving commitment to high standards, that makes SAS the partner of choice for some of the UK’s most progressive organisations: Health Edge, Debt line, G4S, Waterloo Housing Association, Hayley and EDF energy to name but a few. Our portfolio of Application Services cover 12 distinct services including custom application development, application audit & performance monitoring, application hosting & connectivity, through to in-house developer support and business intelligence services.

As a first stage, capturing the full scope in the Statement of Requirement is critical. However, equally important in the QA process is the ‘linkage’ of the network, infrastructure and application elements to SAS’s monitoring systems for in-life support. This process (which we refer to as on-boarding) captures the granular detail including circuit bandwidth, site address, site contact details, and hardware configurations etc. Our systems also store network diagrams and equipment photographs down to individual nodes. This discipline of end-to-end quality assurance ensures projects transition smoothly from first engagement through deployment to in-life support.

The graphic below is a simplified representation of our Cloud Analytics Process – a core aspect of our in-life support. The data from our systems is analysed in our own data warehouse and accessed via the public and private Clouds. The reports generated are standard and advanced. The standard report is a monthly QoS report which is sent to all our managed accounts. The advanced reporting capability goes into greater detail and is part of our Service Relationship Manager or Technical Resource Manager options.

SAS has strong relationships with virtually all of the major carriers and an enviable track record of breaking through the communication log-jams that often frustrate progress. Removing that hassle is certainly one key benefit, but it’s not just about getting the best out of suppliers. The SRM service is also designed to help customers review the performance of their technology environment to identify, isolate and address current issues – while also helping customers optimise their estate to meet future challenges.

All our Technical Relationship Managers have a strong networking, switching and routing background and benefit from the pooled knowledge and experience of 3,000+ network related projects annually. This grounding provides an unsurpassed depth of knowledge and is aimed at blending both tactical and strategic network thought leadership to the client’s ICT planning. This includes acting as the Technical Design Authority for existing and ongoing work related to LAN, WAN, WLAN, Firewalls, WiFi, Switches & other technologies supported by SAS.