We can Help
Bazaar Systems can provide advice and assistance in almost every aspect of IT that concerns a small or medium sized company. For larger enterprises Bazaar Systems provides specialist consultancy in Open Source, Email systems, Security, Networking and Infrastructure.
Here are some typical areas of IT that will concern most companies. Bazaar Systems can help in each of these areas, and at highly competitive rates; but for those intrepid individuals who want to "go it alone" we have put down a few words of advice. Please bear in mind though the old rule that it's always far more expensive to recover from a mistake than it is to plan it right in the first place, and we often don't charge for a chat on the phone.
Open Source Products
Bazaar Systems has a lot of experience with Open Source software, from Linux operating systems through middleware like
Sendmail, to applications like Firefox and Thunderbird. We have separate pages
about many of these products. Click here or on "Open Source Products" in the
Navigation pane on the left, or click on "What is Open Source?" if you are not
sure what it is.
Email Systems
Bazaar Systems has a lot of experience in Email systems - about 15 years worth. We can help with almost any aspect of Email.
Please click here or on "Email Systems" in the left hand navigation pane for
more details.
Network Design
With many years of design and implementation experience in this field, Bazaar Systems can help you establish not only the
physical networks themselves, but also the DHCP and DNS structures that are needed to make them work.
Click
here or "Network Design" in the Nav pane for more details.
Security
IT Security is a vast industry, from Anti-virus software makers to Firewall manufacturers. There is even an International Standard for it, and professional training courses. but if your company can't afford a full-time IT manager, let alone a full-time IT security manager, then let Bazaar systems help you assess your needs. Click here or "Security" in the Nav pane.
Reliability / Business Continuity
If you do nothing else before you go home tonight: Take a backup. Most modern companies are critically dependent on the continuous availability of their IT systems, but few have any idea exactly how reliable those systems are. Bazaar Systems can help you produce a Reliability Assessment. It will show you:
- What data your company stores on Computer
- How important that data is to the smooth running of your company
- What the risks are to that data: what kind of things would make it unavailable.
- How you would recover from a failure, and how long it might take.
- Recommendations as to how you could improve the risks and recovery times for important data.
For more details on this topic click
here or "Reliability" in the Nav pane.
System Design
Linking all these technologies together to make a single integrated system is an art-form in itself. Too many people have technology boxes that are bolted together in some obscure fashion. The general rule seems to be "poke around with the settings until it seems to work, and then walk away". A professional systems house will provide four important phases to any integration work:
- Requirements Gathering
- This is where the designer sits down with you and discusses exactly what the new system is required to do. This sounds obvious, but it is rarely done well. It requires a designer who not only knows what the target products do, how they do it, and also the ability to explain it all in plain English. Almost everyone in IT has heard the phrase from a client: "Of course I wanted it to do that, I thought that was obvious!"
- Agreed Design
- Once the designer knows what the new system is required to do there are usually a number of ways it can be achieved. The designer should take into account, and discuss with the client, costs, timescales, support, security, reliability, and business related events and considerations to arrive at the agreed design.
- Implementation plan
- This should show what's being delivered where, how long the component assembly will take, what resources will be needed from the Client, and the final "go live" target date.
- Proving/Test plans.
- These should be included in the Implementation plan. They aim to prove to the client that the new system actually "does what it says on the can".
If all these phases are used properly the result should be a client who knows exactly what he is getting, when he is getting it, and how he is going to know that it's working as it should.
System Repairs and Upgrades
Repairing computers is a huge topic. It depends on what is wrong with them in the first place. Hardware problems are easy, most components are readily available and even disk failures can be repaired if a backup is available of the data. But most computer problems are down to Software. There are infinite possibilities here from poor performance to unusable system, some won't boot, others crash whenever you start up the accounts package that has been running perfectly OK for two years. Most of the time the skill is knowing where to draw the line: PC repair companies charge between £20 and £50 an hour, this can soon exceed the cost of a replacement PC. At the other extreme are companies that spend ten minutes looking at your computer and then announce they need to reformat the disk and rebuild it from scratch.
Custom Hardware Builds?
Almost any design of computer, short of the huge industrial server type, can nowadays be built from components available at any number of component warehouses. The question is "is it cost-effective to do this?" Nearly always the answer is No. Outlets like DELL can produce a machine at only marginally more than the cost of the components. Even when a machine is needed for a special purpose, video editing for instance, it is probably more cost-effective to buy a standard server and modify it with added components than to build one from scratch.
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