With everybody back on board and nicely refreshed after a stellar Christmas break, it was back to business for the Smile IT team. The customary slow start at the beginning of the month while businesses around Brisbane opened up again turned into a busy and productive time. The result of this is the completion of some interesting projects that we’d like to tell you about! Without further ado, let’s dive into the four top projects of January:
Essential Eight Uplift
In October 2023, for Cybersecurity Awareness Month, Smile IT provided all our managed services clients with a complementary cybersecurity review. The review was designed to measure their posture against the standard set by the Australian Government’s ‘Essential Eight’ maturity model. The free review led to us delivering several security uplifts for Brisbane-based clients.
Involved in the uplift was firstly an in-depth analysis of each business’s current security practices, with the identification of associated shortfalls. This analysis allowed us to make a comprehensive range of recommendations, including improved practices, upgraded tools and licensing and assistance with implementing improved internal practices.
These clients now align with the Essential Eight standard. They enjoy a much-improved security stature, aligning to a security strategy that is widely recognised by insurance providers and business partners throughout Australia.
Our objective is to ensure that there is a comprehensive understanding of the Essential Eight model amongst our Managed Service customers and that each client aligns with Essential Eight within the next 2 years.
Varsity Apartments Wi-Fi Upgrade
Varsity Apartments offers purpose-built student accommodation on the Sunshine Coast. It’s comfortable, convenient, and sticks to a high standard. The only problem was, the outdated internet system was starting to ‘lag’ behind, affecting the students’ study time and their downtime. The management at VA came to Smile IT with the problem of slow internet, and we suggested a solution that would revolutionise their entire network. Faster downloads, no lag time, and no bandwidth limitations for students.
Not only that, they’re new network is ready to take advantage of the 1GB NBN Enterprise Ethernet program when it’s rolled out.
To read all about this project and how we achieved the internet upgrade, have a read of this blog post.
Office Moves and Fit Outs
Just about every business has to shift its location at some point – we’ve done it a few times at Smile as we’ve grown over the years. Moving office can be a bit of an overwhelming experience, but don’t let the hard yards put you off. With an experienced MSP on your side, getting your computer systems and online network set up at the new spot becomes easy. Why? Because we do it all for you! We helped out a couple of our clients with office moves in January:
Client 1: Assisted them in setting up at their new site in Toowoomba. This included a full store fitout, including multiple access points, a firewall, switches and routers.
Client 2: A complete office relocation for a large organisation. Over 100 team members were moving to a new premises, and we installed an entire network fitout for the office. All hardware components needed to be moved, plus there was management of 100’s of metres of cabling to undertake!
Server Refresh and Migration
For one of our clients, it was time to move away from their legacy systems with an entire server refresh, including migrating to a data centre. To complete this, our team installed a new server in the data centre and set up a terminal server environment for our customers ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system. Together with the software vendors, we migrated all their databases across to it.
This involved a lot of time onsite for our team, particularly during the cutover period. It was worth it though, as the server refresh and migration was a success, allowing our client to enjoy the benefits of a transformed network!
Contact Brisbane’s Favourite IT Support Company
If you have tech problems similar to the four projects above, get in touch with Smile IT. As a leading managed IT services provider, we’re here to help!
When he’s not writing tech articles or turning IT startups into established and consistent managed service providers, Peter Drummond can be found kitesurfing on the Gold Coast or hanging out with his family!