Frustration on the Outskirts of Jo’burg

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that people living in cities benefit the most when it comes to access. It would be fair to assume then, that the outskirts would have the same benefits, but in the world of IT providers in Johannesburg, that isn’t the case. How much of a difference can 50kms really make though? Unfortunately for areas like Benoni the answer is quite a bit.

The most glaring difference is that of choice, or lack thereof. In areas like Sandton, if you throw your WIFI router out your window you’re bound to hit a service provider, but the outskirts suffer across the board.

For one, the cost for a fibre solution on the outskirts is higher than what it would be for companies based centrally. The reason being the majority of the fibre cable providers in the industry have laid fibre in the main areas central to JHB, as these have the greater density of uptake. This is because the more customers you have, the cheaper it can be made, and of course, made available.

This means areas like Benoni and Boksburg don't actually have the right infrastructure yet or they are still in the planning stages. As a company, you’re forced to use solutions that are not stable or limit the technology growth aspect of your business and this is a major problem. It’s also a mindset. These companies have been using their ADSL line for ages, and now that fibre is available, they are not willing to pay the price for a fibre line. This is a real catch 22. Either you have the infrastructure and you don’t want to pay, or you don’t have it and you complain over the quality you have.

Timely service in the outskirts is also a challenge considering the distances travelled to customers and traffic causing later arrival times in the event of an emergency, which could be detrimental to a business. As most IT service providers are centrally based, IT staff employed by companies based on the outskirts tend to move closer to the centrally located areas seeking better career opportunities.

All in all, things were not looking great for the areas on the outskirts of Johannesburg and I saw an opportunity to help.

THE COMMUNITY EFFECT

By providing services to a business park or complex in its entirety the dedicated link installed to a building may then be “shared” between users making the pricing much more palatable to the customer.

Discovering the need for Netlayer

In a time when everything is running at a faster pace, from our diminishing attention spans to the heavily accelerated turnaround from birth to braai, this new world is all about volume and efficiency. We go to malls because everything is available in one stop, so why should that be any different for IT solutions?

When Netlayer was established as an IT Support company, our clients started asking if we can also manage their VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocols) and internet solutions, this was an opportunity to establish Netlayer as an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and an MSP (Managed Service Provider), allowing us to manage a customer’s entire solution. Ultimately, we wanted to ensure the client only has one service provider to turn to for help.

Having multiple service providers creates a situation where the one is blaming the other and this creates delay upon delay in service delivery. In my experience, it comes down to egos; no-one ever wants to admit they were wrong and the customer is left without any answers or worse yet mis information.

We have a client who was outsourcing their IT support to one company on a fixed-fee support model who further subcontracted portions of the IT work (IT support covers a vast array of services), internet access to another company and their telecommunications to Telkom.
By moving all their services over to Netlayer, we placed our IT staff at the client’s offices in order to manage their IT requirements. This employee became part of the management team and reports to top management. With this consolidation we have saved them money as we found the previous supplier over complicated their IT solution. As we were the ISP, we supplied them with internet access and could provide quicker response and resolution times when outages occurred and their telephony bill was reduced due to our low VoIP rates charged.

The biggest change for the client was that they had a technical person available first thing in the morning that cost them less than when they outsourced the work on a fixed-fee agreement. This technician with the backing of our office is able to trouble shoot and assist with a vast array of services whilst all maintenance issues are managed by the remote team.

A lot of people have burnt themselves by outsourcing and they may have been taken advantage of. This is when they come to us.

The Generation Gap

Many companies based centrally focus on “white collar” operations and tend to be run by a younger generation compared to companies based on the outskirts which are more focused on “blue collar” operations such as manufacturing and tend to be run by an older generation.

The younger generation employ their own IT staff because they grew up with technology and feel they are more tech savvy and know what is going on with the IT department, plus they don’t want to incur the additional costs. The older generation believe in sticking to what you know and would outsource their IT.

Because of variance in focus and trust the younger generation of business leaders are very reluctant in using IT support businesses over the older generation, who opt to outsource permanent IT resources and remote support services.  The older generation of business owners are also suprisingly keen to try newer offerings, like cloud services. 

IT support has been a bit of a grudge sale to company owners because they realise they can’t do without it. Similar to insurance you know you have to have it for all the what if’s and only really appreciate the purchase when in the midst of a crisis.

The younger generation of business owners are employing their own full time staff, but they don’t really understand what’s involved from a day-to-day operational perspective. All they know is they need to be online, but they don’t know what it takes to keep the business online and certainly none of the other pitfalls. What they do then is hire a consultant that is a bit more technically minded to act as a middle man, paid on a monthly retainer

Companies come in pitching for business and they can go to their middle man as a safeguard and find out if the solution is necessary or if the fee is fair. This is a good thing, because otherwise the providers will bombard them with solutions they may not need.

IT Support Management - Outsourcing vs the Permanent Employee

For many businesses, hiring someone with IT expertise seems like the natural decision, especially as things keep changing in the digital landscape. Who has time to run a business and keep up to date with complicated acronyms? Let’s look at some of the major problems:

• Businesses that employ their own IT staff find themselves in a position where they don’t know how to manage the employee for the very reason they employed them. Because they don’t understand what his job fully entails. They are at the mercy of this employee and rely on them to do what is necessary 
• The employee becomes bored quickly because it’s not an on-going challenge, but more maintenance, so he neglects his role and eventually leaves the company as there is no space for growth
• These types of employees are disconnected from the IT realm as they don’t have resources to turn to when they need help, which can be a liability in a crisis
• They are stuck being employed by non-IT based companies, as their skill level is not deemed good enough by IT companies to earn the same salaries they were earning, so they tend to hop from one non-IT based company to another for a slightly higher salary, yet no growth in skill level
• No one man can do all, so these non-IT based companies still have to outsource IT related work to IT companies as the employee is not skilled enough to deal with all the different technologies the company uses

Security

IT security is not taken seriously enough by companies based on the outskirts due to lack of consultancy knowledge. Often, they seek out advice from these one-man-band guys who operate alone, handing out the wrong information to the client, such as misinformation around which anti-virus to use. To try and manage the amount of damage done after an attack is the scary reality here, all because of the lack of skills and knowledge in the industry.  

A lot of businesses don’t have the basic solutions for securing their networks, such as a Firewall. Many companies rely on a free anti-virus, which of course is not sufficient. There are real solutions available, but no one product can properly offer maximum protection. Certainly none downloaded for free. 

Customers are constantly given incorrect information regarding virus threats and ransomware. The bottom line is it’s impossible to protect yourselves 100% from these threats, but you can implement solutions to assist in limiting the damage caused. As an example, by deploying a device known as a honeypot, you could be notified by means of alerts of ransomware attacks in progress on your network, this will allow you to take action ensuring minimal damage to your data. Some clients only come across ransomware two years after the damage has been caused to their data.

Another aspect of security that most companies never deal with is social engineering, most hacks are done by staff being exploited and not so much the IT environment. Companies should consider staff training which only focusses on IT Security and what to look out for. One simple example is that your Reception should never provide remote access to unverified service providers and certain protocols need to be in place from a Service provider perspective in order to ensure that the client knows who is calling them. At the end of the day IT security is not just for the service provider to take care of but also for business owners.

At Netlayer, we specialise in offering clients on the outskirts of Johannesburg with quality IT service and solutions with a highly skilled team of technical engineers.