Hi I’m James Millard I’ve recently joined A2Z Technologies and thought I would share some of my experiences within my new role and the team over my first couple of months.
When starting with anything new I like getting dug into what is currently in place and gaining the understanding behind it, like many IT systems that are implemented they evolve over time, where business requirements or focus changes. I find this is the best way to learn about the client, the systems and the business.
So far I have worked with the following teams – the development team and IT Manged Service/Ops team, the latter is the team I spend most of my hours with, based in a client’s office. I thought it would be a good insight if I describe briefly about my experiences with both teams so far.
Our Dev team
My experience with the development team has made me realise how good they are at their roles. They listen to what the client wants from management and reporting level but also review and feedback from the end user, so not only are we providing a solution which reports for management but we are producing a system which is intuitive and easy to use for the end user. My experience with this team has been limited but beneficial nevertheless.
IT Managed Service/Ops Team:
The a2ztech IT support guys are great, everyone shares their knowledge of how things are configured and always willing to help, both within the team and most importantly with the client, no jobs are too big or too small.
One of the great things I have experienced with the team is the open communication and the efficiency of getting jobs done. We all have different experiences and knowledge, which most definitely helps when communications are free and flowing, but most importantly we are all on-board when it comes to providing great customer support.
For example, a recent event happened where a client had an equipment failure late in the afternoon, towards the end of working hours. The team however were able to mobilise and get some of the core systems operational by the following morning.
We had all systems back up and running within 24hrs, which included ordering and collecting replacement equipment due to shipping issues. This shows how well the team can pull together and focus on the client’s needs during times of trouble. We already have some plans for the client to review current systems in order to prevent this in the future.
Current Projects\Work Packages:
Since joining the team I’ve completed or assisted in some of the following:
- Deployed a new managed antivirus server, replacing a previous unmanaged AV Clients with in the environment.
- Implemented a secure password server for password management.
- Checking and planning our Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans for some of our clients.
- Designing and Costing New Environments – for new clients
- Building a Test environment for RDS to test application usages.
- Installing new Internet lines.
- Performance testing on applications with the view to move some of these applications to a cloud platform.
- Backup Solution Proof of Concept.
- Windows Deployment Server to improve imaging for a school we work with when the need for equipment rebuild is required
- Ransomware – Decryption
The Future:
The future is ever changing, but I’m hoping my previous experience is going to bring some good ideas to the team, including security improvement, User/PC management and resilience within our clients and systems.
I’ll be looking to do this by introducing some new technologies to some of our clients which they might not have previously considered, such as Office 365, Azure, Active Directory, Hyper-V, VMWare, etc
If you have any questions or requirements which you think we can help you with, please get in touch with us, as we are happy to help and discuss your requirements for your business.
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