For Swiss SMEs, at a fixed monthly price.
The situation
What IT has to deliver has grown considerably in recent years. It should be available at all times, reachable from anywhere and usable on devices that are no longer all in the office. It should be protected, and it should grow with the business without anyone having to think about it.
Recognised standards and frameworks have set out for years what a well-run IT environment involves. They turn a question of trust into a question of fact.
That is work for an entire department. The only question is which one.
A project is finished at some point. Running IT is an ongoing responsibility.
Updates appear almost daily, security vulnerabilities come to light continuously, devices reach the end of their life, people join, change roles and leave. In between there is no quiet spell in which to catch up on what has been left undone. That cannot be solved with a project, only with someone who stays on it every day.
Security, networking, end-user devices, servers, cloud services, backup and recovery: each of these fields brings its own requirements, and a well-run IT environment needs current knowledge in every one of them.
This is not a question of ability but of scope. A well-run IT environment takes people with different specialisms who coordinate their work. It always begins with the same question: how is the work done in this business? Only then comes the technology. It follows the answer, not the other way round. Security and data protection have a say throughout, not only at the end.
Our answer
Most of the work on an IT environment is never seen: systems being monitored, updates arriving in an orderly way, access rights being correct, changes being documented, and a plan ready should the worst happen.
We take on all of that work, as your IT department. We see for ourselves what needs doing. You know your business, we know the technology behind it. Together that becomes an environment that fits you and still holds up years later.
This is possible because the same standard sits behind every environment, built up over many years and a great many projects. Even so, it is not a straitjacket: it changes as your business changes, and it never stands still. Every improvement we work out at one customer becomes part of the standard, and with it part of your environment.
The size of your business makes no difference here. A one-person business receives the same care as a company with several hundred users.
Running your IT has a fixed price. It is based on the size of your environment, not on how much work a given month brought.
Everything involved in running your IT is covered by the monthly price. Our monitoring flags anything unusual long before it turns into an incident, and we follow it up without you having to report anything. We keep everything current and secure, in line with what the manufacturers recommend for their products, with the legal requirements, and with the frameworks that large organisations hold themselves to as well. When someone joins or leaves the company, we set that up. When something is to change, we implement it.
Anyone who calls us speaks to someone who knows your environment and resolves the matter. There is a single number for everything.
Your request stays with the person who takes it, and that person also coordinates your external providers. If the cause lies with a line-of-business application, we call its vendor rather than passing you on. At the start we set down together what gets done without asking and what you want signed off first, and by whom. After that your staff come to us directly, and you keep an overview of what interests you.
We make our money from environments that run stably, and from customers who stay satisfied. So we recommend exactly what your business needs.
An example. You are opening a new site. You tell us how many people will work there and how the rooms are to be used. We look at the conditions on site and ask the questions that matter. From that follow the bandwidth of the connection, how the network components need to be sized, and how many access points belong where. We select the right equipment, plan the installation, coordinate the trades on site and bring it all into service. You decide about the site. Everything that follows from it for your IT is ours to handle.
You give us the work, not your property.
Everything we set up for you is yours from the outset and does not sit in a pooled structure of ours. We set up your workplaces and collaboration in Microsoft 365, your servers and line-of-business applications in data centres in Switzerland. And if you should ever decide otherwise, that too is settled: we hand over your entire infrastructure in good order, fully documented and with all credentials, at no extra cost from our side.
Two kinds of IT
IT consists of two parts that mesh in day-to-day work and are nonetheless very different. One is the foundation: the connection, the network, servers, workplaces, accounts, backup, updates, monitoring. The other is everything your business does with it: which applications carry your work, what the processes between them look like, what can be digitised, and where artificial intelligence makes a difference.
We take on the whole of the first part, with everything attached to it, right down to the conversations with your providers. At its core it looks the same in every business, and it turns out well when it is looked after by people who do nothing else, every day.
The second part stays with you, and it is the more important one: it is bound up with your business, and nobody knows how the work is done there better than you. This is where it is decided what your business makes of its IT.
Updates, incidents, passwords, procuring devices: those are ours. Whoever is responsible for IT at your company carries more weight as a result, not less. The work that then remains is the work the business actually feels: choosing and introducing applications, improving processes, using artificial intelligence where it moves your business forward.
From the internet connection to the laptop on the desk: whatever lies in between, we run. We also handle the conversations with your providers, and we check what they deliver and what they charge.
The infrastructure stays in one pair of hands, and that is why you can see at any time how it is built and why. At fixed intervals we check whether services and licences still match your size, and we change them when they no longer do. Where a provider fails to deliver what was agreed, we pursue it rather than passing it back to you.
Which applications suit your work, what your processes look like, what can be digitised: that is decided by whoever knows the business. We supply the foundation it all rests on.
Whoever is responsible for IT at your company carries more weight. Choosing and introducing applications, improving processes, using artificial intelligence where it moves your business forward: those are the subjects the business actually feels. We work in support of that person, keep them informed of everything concerning the infrastructure, and do not go over their head.
The services
We take on the workplaces, the network, and all the servers and data behind them. Together that is a company's entire infrastructure.
The same scope of service applies to every customer. What differs is the size of the environment behind it.
We set up, manage and keep current every device your staff work with. In the office and at home, from the laptop to the mobile phone.
A workplace is more than a device. It includes each person's accounts, access and permissions, the applications and services they work with, and telephony. We procure devices, set them up and replace them when they fail. Anyone expected to work from anywhere needs more than a computer, so we manage tablets and mobile phones as well. When someone joins, changes role or leaves the company, we take care of putting it into effect. For any request at all, your staff come to us directly.
We manage, run and monitor your network: from the firewall through the switches and the Wi-Fi to the internet connection.
The network connects everything: devices, applications and the outside world. How it needs to be designed depends on several factors: on the number of people at a site as much as on the applications themselves. We design it accordingly, run it, and adjust it when something changes. We see incidents in our monitoring, usually before anyone reports them.
We run your servers, your line-of-business applications and your files, including backup and recovery.
With us, servers, storage and cloud services are one whole: designed together, run together, backed up together. Getting the size right is not a one-off decision: too tight and an application becomes slow, too generous and it becomes expensive. We keep an eye on it and adjust it. We back up your data continuously and test recovery regularly, so that we are prepared should the worst happen.
Scope and limits
The monthly price covers running your IT. What it does not include has three reasons: some things belong to your business and therefore stay with you. Others are charged by third parties whose prices we do not set. And some of it we offer as a service in its own right, because it goes beyond running your IT. All three are set out here, before you have to ask.
Licences, connections and services from other providers we manage as well. Those providers set their own prices, which is why these count as variable costs.
An IT environment that is properly run includes its providers as well. We make sure you only take as much as you actually need, and that the service agreed is in fact delivered. High third-party costs bring us no advantage; keeping them down is part of our job. Whatever belongs to the infrastructure, we put a figure on in the proposal, so that you have numbers to work with.
Your line-of-business applications, your ERP, your CRM: what represents your business is yours to choose. We make sure it runs, and we run the foundation beneath it.
Decisions that require knowledge of your business stay with you: which application you use, where which data and information should sit, where your company should be heading. What we supply is what comes from the IT side: an environment in which your applications work reliably, and the technical side behind it.
Introducing all your staff to the environment is part of onboarding and is included in the price. In-depth training and support with digitising how you work together we quote separately.
At the start we show your staff how to connect, how the everyday tools work and how to reach us. Everyone can work with that. If you want more, we go further: training on Word, Excel and PowerPoint, on Teams and SharePoint, for individuals or for whole departments. And if you want to reorganise how your files are stored, or to digitise processes in Microsoft 365, we plan that as a project and carry it out together with you.
If you want guaranteed round-the-clock cover, if you run highly critical real-time systems, or if you are part of a corporate IT organisation, then we are not the right fit for you.
Anyone who works here does so with enthusiasm and commitment, often outside the usual hours as well. We are the last people to leave a problem sitting because the working day is over or it is the weekend. What we do not do is guarantee cover that would have to hold every night and every public holiday. A promise that does not hold at the decisive moment would be worse than none.
How we work
An IT environment consists of many parts, and each of them exists in dozens of variants. For every task we have chosen a narrow selection of manufacturers and products, from the internet connection to the individual device, and made sure it all fits together. How the work on it is done is settled just as firmly.
This basis is the same for every customer, and that is why we know it in detail. Everything beyond it follows your business, right down to requirements that only you have.
Our five-layer model
Five layers, one on top of the other: at the bottom, internet and telephony from Swisscom; above that, the network from Fortinet; servers and platform services in Microsoft Azure or at Infomaniak; the workplaces from Lenovo, HP and Apple with Microsoft Intune; and at the top, collaboration and applications through Microsoft 365. The same three tools work across all five layers: operations and monitoring with NinjaOne, backup and recovery with Acronis, security with Microsoft Defender.
Some things in an IT environment have to be done regularly. We keep track of what is due when, and we get in touch when the time comes.
The intervals are fixed: by the manufacturers' specifications, by the frameworks we work to, and by what has proven itself in practice. Reviewing permissions and guest access is part of it, as is clearing out what accumulates over the course of a year. Keeping to these dates we regard as our duty. You see what happens in your environment in prepared reports, with anything notable already highlighted. We build the tools for this ourselves, because off-the-shelf products mostly deliver only metrics, and we need information that supports a decision.
What can we do so that this exact thing does not happen again? For us an incident is closed only once that question has been answered.
If the cause can be caught or resolved automatically, we build that, even where the incident itself would take a few clicks to clear. We push automation as far as it will go. The goal is an environment that helps itself in such cases. Whatever comes out of it then runs at every customer: your environment is improved by incidents that occurred elsewhere as well. This is where the emphasis of our work lies, on improvements that last.
Operations to ITIL, security to the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and the CIS Controls, aligned with ISO 27001 and 27002.
What counts as good practice has been set out in these frameworks for years, independently of us. We are not certified, and we would rather say so ourselves than have you go looking. It matters more to us that this way of thinking shapes our work than that we hold a certificate for it: certification would change nothing about how we think and work, and it would tie up resources that today do more good in operations. What we hold ourselves to is there to be read, and you are welcome to measure us against it.
The changeover
With the signature, responsibility for your IT passes to us. Then the real work begins for us: we modernise your environment completely and bring it to the same standard we run every environment to. That is weeks of work, and it never appears as an addition on your invoice, neither at the start nor later.
What comes out of it is your environment: current, on devices and systems that fit together, and set up to fit the way you work. That we do not charge for it has a sober reason. We can only name a fixed price for running it, and stand behind that price, if we can run every environment the same way. This basis is our own precondition, so we create it ourselves. Every business therefore starts at the same level.
For the same reason it moves quickly. Our business is running IT, not rebuilding it: the sooner your environment is there, the more quietly it runs, for you and for us. So we have the same interest as you, and not out of goodwill, but because that is how the model is built.
Support and operations are with us from the signature onwards, including while we are still modernising your environment. There is no interim period in which it is unclear who is responsible.
It is the same people and the same number as later in day-to-day work. If something breaks in the first week that we have not even touched yet, it is still our case. That your environment is not yet set up the way we intend to run it is our job, not your problem.
Modernising your environment is part of onboarding and is included in the price.
The monthly price is all you pay, even if it turns out along the way that there is more to do than expected. It is based on the size of your environment and applies from the first month, including while we are still modernising.
Our business is running IT, not rebuilding it. The sooner your environment is at our standard, the more quietly it runs.
We modernise without charging for it, and we only run your environment the way we have promised once it is finished. Both pull in the same direction: we have no reason to spin the work out, and you do not have to chase us. At the start we tell you what we are beginning with and how you will see the progress.
Process
From the first enquiry to running operations there are four steps. Each one sets out what happens during that time and what is down to you.
A conversation, a visit to your premises, a complete proposal. Before we draw it up, we want to have seen your operation and got to know you.
From you: time for the conversation and a walk round.
The person who comes is someone who will go on to run your environment. You show us round, we see the conditions on site and your people at work. Anyone who sees how the work is done understands what an outage in a given place means. We ask about what the technology does not reveal: who is responsible for what at your company, which times of the year are tight, which application may stand still and which may not, what runs well and what you would like to be different. In the process you get to know us as well. You too are deciding whether this fits, and if in our view we are not the right choice, we tell you so before a proposal arrives.
With the contract, responsibility for your IT passes to us. From day one your staff can reach us with any request at all, even though we have not yet changed a thing in the environment.
From you: two decisions, both in a single meeting.
The two decisions are who will grant approvals in future, and which people receive anything new first. Everything technical is with us. We obtain access to your systems and we record how your environment is built ourselves, because we know what matters for running it later. Any migrations we carry out ourselves. That is quicker, and it depends less on third parties.
This is where the environment we will go on to run takes shape. Nowhere is there more work than here, and your people should notice as little of it as possible.
From you: walking the route with us, and deciding where there are options.
This phase ends at the same point everywhere. All devices are managed and current, accounts and permissions follow a single pattern, the network is divided into separate zones, servers and storage are optimised for what runs on them. Backup and monitoring run on all systems, the documentation is complete, and for every task that recurs it is settled how it is done. There is usually more than one route there. We show you the options, recommend one, and decide together with you. After that it is our job to take that route in a way that keeps your business running. Much of it we build in parallel and only switch over once it is in place. Anything that could cause interruptions we schedule for the evening or the weekend. Where a changeover calls for it, we are on site and see your people through the first few days. We take on the coordination, including with third parties. You hear from us what is coming before it happens, and you know at any time where we stand. We put the completion on record together, and we raise a glass to it.
From here on, IT is with us. You and your staff come to us directly. And you hear from us before you ask.
From you: your decisions when something is due. And a coffee now and then.
Questions
There are two of us, both technical. Because every environment runs to the same standard and is fully documented, either of us can pick up the other's work straight away. Holidays, illness or one of us being out of action therefore change nothing for you except the name on the phone. We plan our capacity deliberately in advance and hire before it becomes tight. And if that ever fails to happen in time, we would rather turn down a new customer than look after existing ones less well.
The price stays stable. It follows the number of your users and the infrastructure behind them, and it changes only when your company grows or shrinks. What third parties charge is outside our influence, and some of it moves with consumption or the exchange rate. We work those costs out precisely and set them out openly. For a reliable figure we need a conversation and a walk round your premises. Nothing more, and after that it is in the proposal.
There is no minimum term. You can give notice at any time, with two months' notice to the end of a calendar month. There is then nothing to disentangle. You receive all access credentials and the full documentation of your environment, together with the passwords you should change. We delete your data at our end as far as that is technically possible, and at the close we set the handover down together in a written record. None of that is charged for.
You can see everything at any time, without restriction. Whatever you would like changed, we implement, as often as you like and at no extra cost to you. That the changes go through us has a reason: we stand behind your environment, and we can only do that if every change takes the same route, is recorded, and can be attributed to a person. That is also what allows your environment to stand up to an audit.
Your servers and your files are held in data centres in Switzerland, either at Infomaniak, which has its own data centres in the country, or in the Azure Switzerland region. The backups naturally stay here as well. Which of the two is right for you depends on your requirements and on how your applications work. And for everything created in Microsoft 365, we agree with you at the start what is stored where.
Yes, expressly. Municipalities, public bodies and care institutions have been part of our thinking from the outset. We have already taken the stricter cantonal data protection requirements into account in the way we are set up. Where particularly sensitive personal data is processed, we run the applications concerned at Infomaniak in Switzerland and store the files there, rather than in SharePoint or OneDrive.
No, we move them, and that costs you nothing extra. Your environment is then built on a platform we have chosen carefully: we assessed several Swiss providers and settled on Infomaniak, alongside Microsoft Azure. There we can make every setting ourselves, from the backup to the size of the systems, without having to wait for anyone. And you get a basis that is prepared for outages and comes with recovery built in, without needing hardware on your premises for it.
Not because of their age. Whether a device can and should continue in service is decided by the technical requirements, and many go on meeting them past the usual service life. Anything faulty or technically superseded we recommend replacing, and you decide. You can of course buy new devices. If you would rather put the capital to other use, there is interest-free hire purchase, usually over five years, at the end of which the device is yours.
Telephony is part of it; we run it through Microsoft Teams with Swisscom as the provider behind it. Printers we connect to the network and monitor, and we distribute the drivers. And because collaboration runs through Teams, the meeting rooms work with Teams Rooms as well, whose administration and operation sit with us. Anything hands-on at the equipment itself, from changing the toner to specifying and mounting the meeting-room equipment, is a specialist's job. Either we know one, or you bring your own.
Then we take that on. Your environment belongs to you, and nobody may withhold it from you. We know exactly which credentials we need, we name them and we insist on them. We record how your environment is built ourselves in any case, and in the end only you and we have access. With providers who stay, such as the vendor of your line-of-business application, we likewise act as your technical point of contact. That way you do not have to hold those conversations yourself.
Team
Good IT rests on two things: on how the work is done, and on who does it. How we work is set out on this page. Who we are is set out here.
Alphahub grew out of what we have seen in over forty years in IT. The most recent of those years we spent together, at the same customers.
For us an environment is only good when it is thoughtfully built, correctly sized, and still robust years later. That is the measure we apply to ourselves first. And we develop it further with every environment we take on.
