Christchurch
IT Support Christchurch: Local Team, Fixed Monthly Cost
Support from people based in Christchurch, on a fixed monthly cost, backing Canterbury businesses since 1989.
Level 1, 85 Riccarton Road. Open Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm.
The basics
What is IT support in Christchurch?
IT support is the arrangement that keeps a business working when its technology does not. It covers the helpdesk people ring when something stops, the monitoring that watches servers and backups, the patching that keeps machines current, and the security sitting around all of it.
A Christchurch provider adds one thing a remote one cannot: someone who can be at your office when the problem is physical. A switch that has died, a server that will not boot, a new starter who needs a machine set up on their first morning.
Most Canterbury businesses buy this as a managed service, on a fixed monthly cost per user, rather than paying by the hour when things break.
Why it matters
Why does response time matter more than owners expect?
It is 4pm on a Friday. The shared drive has stopped responding, three staff cannot reach the files they need to finish a client job, and restarting everything has done nothing. You ring your provider and reach a queue. Someone will look at it on Monday.
Every business owner knows a version of that story, and the fault itself is rarely the frustrating part. It is the wait, and the sense that the people meant to help are somewhere else and in no hurry.
Three staff idle for two hours costs more than most support contracts do in a month. That is the number worth holding in your head when you compare providers on price.
What you get
What is included in our Christchurch support?
Every managed client gets the same six things. There is no bronze tier.
- Monitoring around the clock. Your servers, workstations, backups and security tools report in to us, so faults raise themselves rather than waiting for someone to notice one.
- Response times in your contract. Written down by priority, and we report against them rather than asking you to take our word for it.
- A technician who can come to you. We are on Riccarton Road. On-site is a short drive, not a flight.
- Patching on a schedule. Operating systems and applications kept current automatically, not when somebody remembers.
- Backups tested, not just taken. We restore from them, because a backup nobody has restored from is a theory.
- Reporting you can read. What we did, what is coming up for replacement, and what next year needs to budget for.
The models
What is the difference between reactive and proactive support?
Pay as you go
Break-fix
You ring when something breaks. You pay for the hours. Nobody is watching between calls, so problems arrive as surprises and the bill arrives with them.
- Cost varies month to month
- No monitoring between faults
- Your provider earns more when things go wrong
Fixed monthly
Managed
Systems are watched, patched and maintained continuously. Most faults are caught and cleared before anyone notices. Unlimited helpdesk support is included rather than metered.
- Same cost every month
- Faults raise themselves
- Your provider earns more when nothing goes wrong
Alongside your team
Co-managed
You have your own IT person. We supply the tooling, the after-hours cover and the specialist depth they do not have on their own.
- Fills gaps rather than replacing anyone
- Cover for leave and busy periods
- Access to skills a single hire cannot span
Support in practice
What happens when you log a job
Work is triaged by what it is blocking, not by the order it arrived in. A printer that nobody needs until Thursday does not sit in front of a site that cannot trade.
- A site down or a security incident goes straight to the top and is picked up immediately, including outside business hours.
- One person unable to work is treated as urgent, because from where they are sitting it is total.
- Requests that are not blocking anyone, new starters, software installs, changes, are scheduled rather than dropped in front of something more serious.
- Anything the monitoring raises is worked without a ticket from you at all, which over a year is where most of the volume goes.
Response times are set out in a service level agreement, or SLA, agreed with you rather than advertised here. What is reasonable for a five person office and a fifty person one are not the same number, and we would rather commit to an SLA that fits your business than publish a figure that flatters us.
Security
What security comes with support?
Support and security stopped being separate purchases some time ago. Four things are part of every managed plan rather than an upsell.
- Endpoint protection. On every machine, centrally managed, with alerts coming to us rather than to a user who will dismiss them.
- Multi-factor authentication. On email and remote access, because a stolen password on its own should not be enough to get in.
- Patching. The single most effective thing anyone does about security, and the one most often left undone.
- Backup you can restore from. Tested, and held so that ransomware reaching your files cannot reach your backups.
Deeper work sits outside the support plan and gets quoted on its own. Cyber security services covers audits, penetration testing, monitoring and certification support.
Cost
What does IT support cost in Christchurch?
Before you weigh the price of IT support in Christchurch, work out what an hour of downtime costs you. Staff wages, work not delivered, and the client waiting on it. That number decides whether a support contract is expensive or cheap.
Managed IT
A fixed monthly fee per user, with unlimited helpdesk support included rather than metered. You know what next month costs before it starts, and ringing us is never a calculation about whether the problem is worth the money.
Projects and hardware
Quoted separately on their own merits, so a server replacement or a migration does not disappear into a monthly figure you cannot pull apart.
What the monthly number actually is depends on how many people you have, what you run, and how much of it you want us to carry. An IT assessment gives you the figure. No charge and no obligation.
A check
How do you know your current provider is falling short?
You do not need a technical audit to work this out. Six things tell you whether your Christchurch IT support is doing its job.
- You hear from them only when something is broken
- You cannot get a written response time, or nobody tracks whether it is met
- The same fault keeps coming back
- Nobody has talked to you about next year’s budget or what is due for replacement
- You have never seen evidence that a backup was restored successfully
- You are not sure what is included and what generates an extra invoice
Any two of those is worth a conversation. All six is a provider who has stopped paying attention.
Questions
Christchurch IT support FAQs
Do you charge for the IT assessment?
No. We look at what you are running, what is working and what is not, and come back with a recommendation and a cost. There is no charge and no obligation at the end of it.
How does switching IT support providers actually work?
We document what you have, take over monitoring and access in a planned order, and run alongside your existing arrangement until the handover is complete. Most of it happens without your staff noticing. The part that needs your involvement is usually a single conversation about passwords and admin accounts.
Do we have to sign a long contract?
Terms vary with what is included, and we will tell you the term before you commit rather than after. If a provider will not put the exit terms in front of you at the start, that is worth noticing.
What size businesses do you support in Christchurch?
From teams of around five people through to organisations with several hundred staff across multiple sites. The mix of services changes with size. The support model does not.
Can you work alongside our existing IT person?
Yes. That is a co-managed arrangement, and it is common. We supply the tooling, the after-hours cover and the specialist depth that a single internal hire cannot span, and your person keeps the relationships and the local knowledge.
Is cyber security included in IT support or charged extra?
Core security is part of managed IT: endpoint protection, patching, multi-factor authentication and backup. Deeper work such as penetration testing, formal audits or certification support is quoted separately, because not every business needs it.
What happens outside business hours?
The office is staffed Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm. A site down or a security incident is picked up outside those hours as well, because those are the two things that cannot wait until morning. Anything that is not blocking the business is worked the next business day. What is covered after hours, and what it costs if anything, is set out in your agreement rather than left to be argued about at the time.
Do you support staff working from home?
Yes, and for most of our clients that is now a normal part of the arrangement rather than an extra. A laptop at a kitchen table gets the same monitoring, patching, endpoint protection and helpdesk as a machine in the office. What changes is the network it sits on, which is why home setups get looked at as part of the assessment rather than assumed to be fine.
What happens if we open a second site?
Adding a site is a change to the plan rather than a new contract. We look at what the site needs for connectivity, hardware and access, quote that as a project, and the ongoing support moves to the new headcount. If the second site is in Dunedin, it is the same company and the same team rather than a referral to a partner, which is the reason we run both offices.
What is not included in managed IT support?
Managed IT covers the support, monitoring, patching, backup and core security. It does not cover hardware purchases, project work such as a server replacement or a migration, third-party software licences, or deeper security work such as penetration testing and certification. Those are quoted on their own so you can see what each one costs rather than finding them folded into a monthly figure.
The office
Where is Exodesk in Christchurch?
Where we are
Level 1, 85 Riccarton Road, Christchurch 8011. Open Monday to Friday, 8am to 5pm. A staffed team, not an address on a letterhead.
Christchurch office details
How far we reach
Most of our Canterbury clients are within half an hour of the office. We also work with businesses throughout New Zealand, including large organisations with multiple sites, and staff working from home, from vehicles and from sites.
Exodesk has supported Canterbury businesses from this office since 2009, and the wider business has been running for more than 35 years, since 1989. We also run a Dunedin office, so a client with sites in both cities deals with one company.
Next step
Not sure what you are currently paying for?
Most people who ring us are not certain what their current contract covers or what it is costing them. An assessment answers both, and you keep the answer whether or not you move.
Contact
Send us a message
For an IT assessment to discuss your requirements.