Block Hours

Our managed service portfolio delivers outstanding service levels with minimal fuss. We know how difficult it can be for organisations to build and maintain a skilled team that can address operational issues as they occur, while at the same time delivering new systems and projects. Our customers bridge this gap by engaging Block to take ownership of a range of tasks to suit their needs.
We believe service excellence in this area relies on deploying people who are competent, who really care, and who are supported by outstanding systems and best-practice procedures. That’s what we offer.
Customers who engage Block to manage services on their behalf can expect:

• Improved and consistent service levels
• The flexibility to deploy new systems without having to worry about the availability of internal resource
• More predictable IT spend over the term of engagement
• The ability to focus internal resource on strategic investment rather than operational issues

Service Flexibility

We cover the right technologies. We have the right people, with the right attitude, processes and systems. We meet SLAs.

There is one final Block service element that we think stands apart: the commercial flexibility of our offering. Using our unique pricing structure, customers can choose different levels of support and management for different elements of their infrastructure, and be charged accordingly.

Maybe you want 24x7x365 cover in your Data Centre, but you only need 8x5xNBD for your IP Telephony System. Maybe you want on-site support for your Video Conferencing System, but remote support will do when it comes to your WLAN.

With Block, you will pay for and receive just what you need. With many other providers, you will have to choose from a limited set of options that have more to do with lowering costs and complexity for the provider rather than the customer.

System Review and Business Impact Analysis

A business impact analysis (as it pertains to IT systems) can be defined as the process of reviewing and defining the risk that an IT system or process presents to business operations when or if it fails. The BIA defines the potential cost of failures so that it can be compared against the cost of mitigation. The costs are usually financial, but can also be measured in nonmonetary terms.

It's standard practice for organizations to outsource the business impact analysis, because the evaluator must be impartial and skilled at quickly separating fact from emotion. Therefore integrators and consultants are ideal candidates to conduct a BIA.

More on business impact analysis
Chapter excerpt: Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning

The specific business impact analysis methodology can vary quite a bit from organization to organization, but there are some common elements. The process for most BIAs should start with the development of an application portfolio. This identifies the applications that support specific business processes like "payroll," "supply chain" or "order to cash." The BIA study then should determine the likely failure points for the components defined in the portfolio. Next, the examiner should determine the cost of such failures. The cost is often measured in expense per hour but, depending on the business process being evaluated, may instead be defined by share price, the impact of a mission failure or even life and limb.

Once the cost of a failure is understood, you should document the organization's risk appetite and define required application availability metrics like uptime, RTO (recovery time objective) and RPO (recovery point objective). The final product of a BIA is usually a gap analysis that documents the delta between the desired state and the actual current state of the IT systems that support the business.

Customers derive real value from business impact analyses. First it helps them to pinpoint areas of gaping risk and focus on patching them. It also helps the IT management team build a solid business case for investing in IT resources to resolve the problem. Finally, it ensures that the business will get the most risk reduction value out of their investment dollar.

Solution providers also benefit from a customer's BIA study -- and not just by the billable hours associated with the study. A business impact analysis provides great intelligence about a customer's business and helps the solution providers understand what is important to the customer. A BIA usually speeds up the sales process; with a defined pain point, it is much easier to craft a solution that will get funding. And delivering a BIA for customers will improve the channel professional's executive relationships in the account. BIA studies often catch the interest of senior leadership and help to build quality sponsorship at executive management levels.