About Max. I.T. Pty. Ltd.

Incorporated in 1995, Max. I.T. has enjoyed steady growth and now employs technicians, software developers, Client Services and Administration staff. Headed up by Senior Partner, Tim Blizard, Max. I.T. is well positioned to provide a complete range of Information Technology services to small, medium and large organisations.

Started as a one-man consulting company by our Senior Partner, Tim Blizard, there were early successes providing technical support services to companies such as GE Plastics and the Australian Chamber of Manufacturers. In addition to technical support, Tim provided software development and traditional consulting services to a prestigious customer list including United Energy, Telebusiness, ESSO Australia, National Australia Financial Management and Toyota Australia.

Today, Max. I.T. is actively involved in the management and support of I.T. infrastructure at over a dozen companies. Our software development team is engaged in several long term projects including an in-house, line-of-business, system for a large agent of the federal government.

Max. I.T. revenues are generated from three discrete activities:

• Technical Support Services
• Software Development Services
  
• Product Sales
  

With Tim’s background in all of these areas, Max. I.T. successfully blends these into a total package for our clients.

It is our experience that having both technical support specialists and software developers within the one organisation results in a stronger technical offering in both disciplines. Our technical support staff benefit from having access to software developers who understand software and have a deeper understanding of the operating system. Conversely our software developers gain from the experiences of our technical support staff supporting hardware and software in the “real world”.

Max. I.T. invests a considerable amount of time and money in evaluating industry trends and new technologies. This allows us to stay ahead of our client's requirements and make recommendations that are based on a solid understanding of emerging technologies. We pride ourselves on taking the time to understand the fundamentals of our client’s businesses so that our advice is tailored to the needs of specific businesses and the industries they operate in.

Providing clients with high-quality, objective advice and guidance is of paramount importance to Max. I.T. In this regard our product sales activities are considered to be secondary and only undertaken in order to offer clients an end-to-end service offering.

Technical Support While our technical support offerings are currently Microsoft centric, we are increasingly getting involved in Linux/Unix domain. A number our clients now operate Linux based servers to operate specific application systems. Furthermore, it is clear to us that the future of voice telephony is centred on the Linux platform.

Companies that operate mainframes have long understood the need to apply discipline to the management of Information Technology systems and infrastructure. Disciplines such as Asset Management, Strategic Planning, Disaster Recovery, Change Management and Security have developed and matured since their beginnings in the 1960s. Despite this, smaller companies that operate networks of servers and workstations are often barely aware of these disciplines and have little understanding of them. Stemming from Tim’s work in the mainframe field, Max. I.T. brings these disciplines to the small business.

Asset Management/Site Audits Max. I.T. is well placed to conduct detailed audits of I.T. infrastructure. In 1998, Tim played an integral part in the team that developed the procedures and software used to conduct a full audit of all I.T. infrastructure within the Victoria Police. This included sending teams of technicians to all Police stations in Victoria to gather audit information and a team of data entry personnel to enter this information into an application written by Tim.

Based on this work, Max. I.T. has improved the data capture forms, and the application, to facilitate rapid collection of I.T. infrastructure details and can provide clients with a database application containing this information so that they can continue to maintain it as changes occur.

We strongly recommend that an audit be conducted for all new clients and to encourage this we offer a 50% discount off the cost. Once the audit is complete, Max. I.T. will provide a comprehensive report detailing the infrastructure currently in place within the business. This report will also highlight any areas of vulnerability as well as make recommendations for suitable courses of action.Strategic Planning In our experience, Information Technology use in small businesses tends to grow with little strategic planning. Large organisations long ago learned the value of forward planning when it comes to I. T. purchases. Such planning ensures that a company maximises the value of current technologies while minimising the support and maintenance overheads.

As an example, Max. I.T. once acquired a new client that typifies the small business that has not planned their I.T. purchases. This company had approximately 15 workstations each acquired from a different source. Amongst these workstation there was an example of every version of the Windows operating system since Windows 95 and almost every version of Microsoft Office. Most of these workstations were from, what Max. I.T. would term, Tier 3 suppliers, built to order from the cheapest parts available at the time. In many cases these suppliers do not stay in business long, reducing the value of any warranty attached to the product and ensuring that getting any product support is nearly impossible.

Given such a diversity of hardware and software, providing technical support services is time consuming and costly. No two workstations are alike so there is no reference model when searching for the cause of aberrant behaviour. In the event that a system rebuild is required, the software media often cannot be located because no central registry exists.

The message here is that homogeneity simplifies the I.T. environment and reduces the cost of support.

The purpose of computers is to run application software which delivers operational benefits to an organisation. Despite this, many businesses make the mistake of selecting an operating platform, hardware and operating system before undertaking a thorough application software selection process. Max. I.T. works with it’s clients to guide them through these processes and ensure that they end up with systems which deliver maximum benefit to the business.Business Continuity Every company knows the importance of having a disaster recovery plan but, surprisingly, few small businesses actually do. Nor do most businesses understand the distinction between "disaster recovery" and "business continuity". Some businesses do have a regimented data backup procedure, believing that this is all they need, but even this first step is often incomplete, with untested restore procedures and a lack of off-site backup storage.

When faced with a disaster, many small businesses do not survive. Conventional wisdom suggests that as high as 40% of small businesses impacted by a major incident never reopen their doors. A further 25% fail within the next year. This includes businesses that have adequate data backups since they have often failed to make allowances for the time required to obtain equipment (including the hardware required to access the backups they have), the effect on revenue and cash flow and the impact on customer perceptions.

Max. I.T. has the experience necessary to help small businesses prepare complete business continuity plans. Our experience in this field stretches back to Tim Blizard’s work in mainframe system disaster recovery in the 1980’s.

At the end of 2004, one of our clients was unlucky enough to experience a fire which, while relatively minor and contained to a single office within the building, caused sufficient damage to render all electronic equipment unusable. As the photographs on the following pages show, this is surprisingly easy in the case of fire since soot contamination is both corrosive and a conductor of electricity, meaning that special handling is required to salvage the contaminated equipment. With the commodity pricing of today’s computers and the high cost of these special decontamination procedures, replacement of the damaged equipment is often far more cost effective.

Even though the fire rendered all their equipment unusable, thanks to the efforts of Max. I.T. staff, our client was fully operational within two business days. Temporary accommodation was secured, temporary cabling was installed and second-hand server and workstation equipment was installed so that all of the client’s staff could return to work. The impact on the business was kept to a minimum due to good forward planning.
 
Max. I.T. offers the following services to our clients with respect to disaster recovery and business continuity planning:

• Preparation of disaster recovery and business continuity plans
• Installation and maintenance of good backup and restore procedures
  
• Remote backups performed across the Internet
  
• Secure storage of off-site backups in a media-rated fire-resistant cabinet
  
• Supply of small capacity media-rated fire-resistant cabinets for on-site storage backup media
  

Max. I.T. is well placed to offer nightly remote backups across the Internet. Our premium grade ADSL connection is backed by 24 hour support and a full Service Level Agreement. We have also invested in dual high capacity automated tape libraries which provides for up to 4 terabytes of backup capacity per night.