Services are a key enabler of technology deployment and maintenance.

Exertis has a range of services outside of our normal support, including but not limited to training, design and deployment. These services enable you to strengthen your customer service offerings and increase your ability to either create new sources or increase your current annuity revenue streams, without the need for in-house knowledge or expensive infrastructure investment.

Our aim is to fully support and equip you to confidently recommend, sell and service the leading enterprise networking, unified communications, security and software and wireless solutions. Furthermore, we’ve added even more to our enterprise services portfolio in the areas of cyber security, Audio Visual, managed print, Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM), Mobile Threat Defence (MTD), recycling and refurbishment.

So, here’s a quick rundown on the services you could be using to win new business or increase opportunities with your existing customers. Many of our services can be white labelled, with or without your company logo, either as entire solutions or on a modular basis depending on your needs. That could mean simply adding some extra resource or support staff to your existing teams, as and when you need them, or engaging an entire project team.

Remote monitoring and advanced failure notification enable both you and your customers.

Exertis offer our “white label” support services to three main categories of resellers.

1. Small resellers can use our services to enable them to operate in technology spaces where they wouldn’t normally have the expertise or infrastructure to support.

2. Mid-size resellers who have a level of expertise and infrastructure can look to outsource elements of this, so they can focus their more expensive, skilled resources on other priorities to create better value for the business.

3. Large resellers who have strong expertise and infrastructure can engage our services on a “tap in – tap out” basis, as needed only.

Often deployment of new technology can reveal gaps in in-house skills or resources. Exertis can plug that gap so that there is no delay to the deployment and ongoing support of your solution.

We provide 24/7/365 remote monitoring and advanced failure notification to a range of solutions to enable both you and your customers protection from potential issues all year round, providing peace of mind and true value add to your customers.

Pre-sales and staging

Our distribution pre-sales services are there to help you scope your customers’ requirements and deliver a proof of concept that secures the opportunity to win the business. If you require more in-depth technical support we can work with you to deliver the best solution providing professional services, on-site demonstrations, wireless site surveys, POC evaluations and a scope of works, all provided at competitive rates to ensure you maximise margin potential with your customers.

Once scoping requirements are agreed, Exertis Deploy services can accelerate implementation and deployment on a range of technologies to get your customers operational in the optimal time and with minimal disruption, whether in the UK or Europe.

Increasingly, your customers expect their solution to just work. That’s why we recommend everything is assembled, devices are configured, and software or policies installed before installation. Staging is a vital step in any new deployment and is the process of building and preparing solutions that are ready for delivery and installation. There are many good reasons for this.

Staging eliminates any surprises and provides an opportunity to resolve any unforeseen issues, thereby eliminating the risk of problems occurring once solutions are deployed on premise or to end users. Whilst resellers can stage and prepare equipment themselves, it uses up their valuable time and resources. Although, it might be seen as an extra cost to outsource, it can actually save time and money by ensuring everything is ready, with the onus on Exertis to ensure deployment runs smoothly. In addition, it can help eliminate costly engineer visits to resolve any issues. Furthermore, Staging ensures a much fuller evaluation and testing of the solution to ensure it meets the business objectives.

For overworked IT teams, it can free up their time for more critical tasks. Exertis provides a full range of Staging services that resellers can take advantage of and white label to support their customers. Exertis provide staging services across a range of technologies including builds, imaging, asset tagging, configuration and testing, making the complex simple.

Exertis managed services

For most companies, the need for robust IT solutions is paramount. That means reliance on just a break-fix option is no longer sufficient and the monitoring of networks, and endpoint devices (e.g. servers, laptops, tablets, mobiles etc), optimising the infrastructure and protecting the overall solution from security threats is now critical. Network and solution monitoring can be time-consuming for the end user and is one of the common areas of managed services. Equally, some resellers who don’t have the facility to provide a 24/7/365 support service, either on-site or remotely, outsource this part of the business themselves.

Nowadays, a managed support service is something that even small businesses can’t afford to be without. As more companies look to outsource their IT operations to third parties, resellers are having to look at providing a range of services to satisfy that need.

Some resellers can provide that function themselves and have become Managed Service Providers (MSP) whilst others have chosen to use the resources available from Exertis. The MSP takes full responsibility and the risk of managing the service but equally maintains an on-going relationship with the customer which can lead to future business. Exertis can provide a range of end to end managed services including finance options and, in some cases residual value-based affordability offerings, to help your customers realise the best value whilst improving your ability to retain their business at the end of the term.

MSP’s can manage both on-premise and cloud-based infrastructure for end customers, thereby providing services typically associated with Cloud Service Providers (CSP) such as software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS).

With cloud marketplaces, distributors can play a key role in helping resellers move to this model by assessing and deploying SaaS and PaaS solutions.

Exertis Manage allows you to deliver a comprehensive managed service to your customers without you incurring the time, costs, staff and risk involved in setting this up in-house. Modular based, Exertis Manage covers: firewall; switching, routing, wired and wireless networking and unified communications.

Managed print services (MPS)

Managed print services from vendors like Epson provide a pre-determined amount of printing supplies with a three-year contract at a fixed monthly fee. Resellers get the advantage of the GP upfront with the vendor taking the risk. Importantly, the reseller keeps the engagement with their customer and an opportunity to upsell at the end of the contract. For resellers that have traditionally just sold the hardware this provides a simple to manage, on-going revenue opportunity, particularly with SMBs who may have previously been put off by the cost.

Exertis recently announced the availability of the Epson Print365 managed print solution for our UK and Ireland resellers. Each Epson Print365 package includes a productive, low energy Workforce Pro business inkjet printer, automated supply delivery, and full on-site service and support.

What is the Exertis firewall as a service (FWAAS)?

For example, built around the SonicWALL security platform – a Gartner Magic Quadrant leader for Unified Threat Management (UTM) – FWaaS includes the firewall appliance, security and management software, plus related support and subscription services, neatly bundled together into a monthly subscription.

With no upfront cost or investment, you can instantly increase your service offering without incurring any risk from setup and operational costs. The FWaaS programme aligns service providers recurring revenue with a recurring expense model, allowing you to grow your business more effectively. As with all Exertis Manage services, FWaaS is available as a white label offering, allowing you to brand and deliver FWaaS in your own name whilst utilising our 24/7/365 Centre of Excellence (CoE) team.

Enterprise mobility management (EMM)

Exertis have added a new technology arm to its already extensive fleet, branded; ”Macro Mobility” and focuses directly on enabling, securing, managing and deploying mobile devices including handset, tablet, Mi-Fi and Laptops. Our mobility teams are solutions specialists who enable us to work with any Android, iOS, MacOS or Windows10 devices and provide them pre-configured, out of the box. When they arrive with your end users, they are already secure, encrypted and configured to your customers’ specific requirements, pre-loaded with business apps, business email, data protection (GDPR) policies and access to back-end systems. This is known as Zero Touch Provisioning (ZTP) and allows us to deploy devices en masse directly to end-users throughout Europe without the need for IT to unbox and manually configure devices.

Macro Mobility can support you on all of the market leading EMM platforms, including VMWare Workspace One (Formerly Airwatch), MobileIron, Microsoft Intune and Samsung Knox amongst others. We leverage all of the recognised industry platforms including Apple Business Manager (formerly DEP), Samsung Knox Mobile Enrolment KME, Google’s Android Enterprise & Microsoft’s Autopilot.

End customers expect you to do more to protect their investment.

We also work with all the leading Mobile Threat Defense (MTD) platforms including CheckPoint, Zimperium, Wandera & Asavie. MTD works in conjunction with EMM and is an advanced platform that allows us to detect known and unknown threats in real-time on mobile based devices. Furthermore, we can analyse them and provide real-time reporting and control. It addresses the growing wave of Malware, Phishing and network attacks such as “Man in the Middle” attacks.

We provide 24/7/365 monitoring and technical support within our managed services offerings, whether it’s IT to IT or direct to end users. This includes 3rd party app support, VIP handholding, out of hours lock, trace & wipe service and a complete end to end managed service. We make the complex simple for our resellers by providing professional services, consultancy and training across all of our solutions.

Exertis Monitor

Nowadays, it’s simply not enough just to have engineers on call with specific SLAs. End customers expect you to do more to protect their investment. Remote monitoring provides a proactive maintenance approach that can deliver advanced notification of failures or issues allowing you to get ahead of the problem. Your customers will notice the results in reduced downtime. Equipment uptime is invaluable and remote monitoring provides benefits for engineers with improved visibility of systems that can enable preventative measures to be taken.

Exertis Monitor provides an additional post sales service that offers a basic level of monitoring on any vendor solution across the entire IT infrastructure. Resellers can take advantage of device monitoring on switches, servers, virtual hosts, storage and UPS. Outside of these core areas, any other IP enabled device can be monitored to provide, at a minimum, availability reports. Exertis Monitor provides availability monitoring and reporting with a notification process on outages or performance issues.

Exertis can provide that support as a white label service from our own Centre of Excellence (CoE) available 24/7/365 from vendor endorsed qualified engineers that work to best-in-class processes and service levels. All of the systems and infrastructure that power our CoE are built in a fully redundant capacity eliminating any single point of failure, improving performance and strengthening internal security. Exertis CoE runs on the vendor hardware, software and technologies which Exertis maintain and manage for our customers.

Exertis Educate

We have trained thousands of engineers on vendor accredited training courses. Our real-life and hands-on approach to training is delivered by Exertis trainers, recognised worldwide as being experts in their fields – all active technical consultants with real-world experience of deployment, configuration and support.

Exertis Educate training is delivered throughout the year across the UK at Exertis Educate centres in Burnley, Stoke and Basingstoke, or on-site at your premises. Exertis Educate delivers immediate, real-world benefits including:

• Reduced cost of network design, management and maintenance
• Strengthens customer relationships through certified staff and being part of the vendor community
• Reinforcement of class-based learning with post-course access to 24×7 support
• With Exertis Educate, training is available for you and your customers. In addition to vendor accredited course ware, bespoke courses can be designed.

Break-fix Exertis Maintain

Whilst we recommend a proactive approach to services, we also provide through our Exertis Maintain offering ‘break-fix’ support contracts which cover different levels of requirements from support access to hardware replacement and more. The speed and quality of response when help is needed is critical to avoid potentially expensive downtime.

For those times when requirements are new and outside a request-for-change of an existing Exertis Maintain and Exertis Manage service, Exertis Assist provides for the purchase of additional service credits. Purchased by the hour, Exertis Assist can cover all of your customer change requirements.

Accreditation breeds confidence

Our Centre of Excellence and professional services are ISO27001 accredited and we have Cyber Essentials PLUS certification and IASME governance. The five technical security controls under the Cyber Essentials scheme cover: firewalls, secure configuration, user access control, malware protection and patch management.

Cyber Essentials PLUS, a higher level of assurance, requires a qualified and independent assessor to examine the same five controls, testing that they work in practice by simulating basic hacking and phishing attacks. Cyber Essentials is a government-backed, industry supported scheme to help organisations protect themselves against common cyber-attacks.

Exertis is proud to be an IASME Governance and Cyber Essentials certification body and is able to offer a cyber security auditing service that resellers can offer to their customers. IASME is recognised as the best cyber security standard for small companies by the UK government. In addition to the vast range of technologies we support, we are also a Mitel Authorised Service Centre and a Huawei Certified Services Partner.

Repair, refurbishment and trade-in

Exertis can offer repair and refurbishment of smartphones, wearables and tablets. In addition, we have launched an innovative, corporate trade-in programme for those devices.

Trade-in programmes have become increasingly popular driven by the higher initial cost of top of the range devices, the residual value that premium products retain, the desire for consumers and business to be using the latest technology, and the recognition that sustainability is an important issue for everyone. Call us for further details.

At your service

Services are the future and at Exertis we provide true value-added services as a key part of our business to enable you to strengthen your relationship even further with your customer. Many of our services are available as a white label service and furthermore, as your distribution partner, you are safe in the knowledge that we aren’t a competitor to your business. Our services offerings help to make the complex simple.

For more information on our range of services, contact your account manager.