Managing multiple clients with diverse needs is painless for ramsac

As a managed services provider (MSP), ramsac supports multiple clients with a range of different server hosting requirements. Migrating to Amito’s Tier 3 Reading data centre has enabled it to manage their customers’ diverse needs and infrastructure efficiently and proactively.

The brief

ramsac provides IT management and technical support to businesses of all sizes across London, Surrey and the south east, with a proactive 24/7 service that aims to cut the stress out of managing technology. The business was keen to find a long-term colocation partner that would help it meet customers’ diverse expectations, while offering the capacity to support rapid future growth.

A visit to Amito’s Reading data centre in the site’s early days in 2016 convinced ramsac’s technical director Paul Mew to migrate from the company’s existing provider. “Amito was offering a more modern facility than other, dated sites we’d visited, where power and cooling systems were less efficient, for example,” he explains. “On top of that, the costs were lower.”

The solution

ramsac now manages 15 separate customer installations within Amito’s facility – a combination of fractional and full racks. Servers are linked to the clients’ own offices via VPN, using the data centre’s high bandwidth, super-reliable connectivity.

Paul Mew says the ramsac team feels exceptionally well looked after, which in turn helps the business look after its own clients. He singles out the remote hands service and VISION customer portal as particular benefits, which enable the team to meet exacting ongoing requirements without draining time and resources.

“It makes a big difference not having to send someone over to carry out routine tasks like rebooting a server, amending backup frequency, or making a change to someone’s setup. Supporting multiple clients can mean we need to apply the same software update, for example, across several installations at different times. Amito’s support allows us to make changes uniformly across the entire base without having to jump in the car.”

The ramsac team values the flexibility and responsiveness of the service – not only when there’s a technical issue to resolve, but also with ‘nuts and bolts’ processes such as getting quotes for new orders. The VISION portal also allows ramsac to quickly arrange and authorise access for its own and third-party engineers when needed, without having to jump through hoops. This all has a knock-on effect on the speed and quality of the service it provides to clients.

“It’s the small things that make the difference, because it’s the little hassles that add up to a less than satisfactory experience,” says Paul Mew. “Amito makes tasks like arranging deliveries to the site easy, for instance. We have full confidence they’ll be handled safely and efficiently, and we can unbox the kit next to the rack, rather than having to do it in a separate room. It all comes together to make a great experience.”

Again, this has an impact on ramsac’s own customers, most of whom are non-technical and need a low-maintenance hosting solution. “They don’t want to be in there; they want to outsource everything,” continues Paul. “With Amito, there are no niggles and grumbles, we respond fast to their requests, and they’re sure their installation is in safe, professional hands.”

It was important to ramsac to find a ‘home’ it wouldn’t need to move out of every couple of years in search of greater capacity. Buying extra rack space in Amito’s data centre is a simple process, as is moving in extra kit as the footprint expands. This has been particularly useful as the surge in remote working led to increased demand for data centre colocation, as clients scale down their office space and move servers offsite.

The outcomes

The flexibility and agility that comes from working with a smaller data centre provider has enabled ramsac to meet the varying needs of multiple clients, and efficiently manage the myriad ongoing tasks associated with managing their infrastructure.

Superior client experience – exceptional support allows ramsac’s customers to be as ‘hands off’ as they want to be.

Ability to meet customer expectations – immediate scaling up of space, bandwidth and capacity enables fast turnaround of requests, with no break in business continuity.

Stability – Amito’s data centre provides a long-term, scalable solution.

Efficiency boosted – remote hands support and customer portal streamline processes, adding up to time and money saved.

“If a client requirement pops up, whatever it is, we can say ‘yes’. If they want one server for a month, we can give them that. If they need 10 extra racks straight away, we can sort it. There are never any issues. This also helps us win new business – if there’s a challenging or unusual requirement in the tender, there’s no fretting about whether we can do it or how. We just ask Amito for a quote.”

Paul Mew, technical director, ramsac